Nothing new but very true and maybe should be required reading for people who read >10000 words per day on-screen. Just something to keep in the back of your mind when you find yourself beginning to skim or click away. Solutions? Problem worth solving? As is so often the case, I think this an issue if the individual lets it become one. If you want to read and understand and remember the content, you will, and if you don't haptics aren't going to help. Some time in iso might. I've completely given up on 99 percent of my generation and await with morbid fascination the intellectual habits of the next few.
Also: You write: From the article:Nothing new
-I don't know.... I personally would have never guessed the following: (Interestingly, Coiro found that gamers were often better online readers: they were more comfortable in the medium and better able to stay on task.)
if they read the original texts on paper or a computer with no Internet access, their end product was superior to that of their Internet-enabled counterparts. If the online readers took notes on paper, however, the negative effects of Internet access were significantly reduced. It wasn’t the screen that disrupted the fuller synthesis of deep reading; it was the allure of multitasking on the Internet and a failure to properly mitigate its impact.
-This is fascinating to me. Simply having internet access creates an environment where you know you have options to click away and thus need to be prepared to manage your behaviors in a different way. I've completely given up on 99 percent of my generation and await with morbid fascination the intellectual habits of the next few.
-I'm not so sure it's worth abandoning an entire generation. There are a number of your contemporaries on Hubski that impress me. That said, I think this website expects more from people. I think that is a huge part of the problem. Not enough online forums and spaces expect much of us. It's a giant race to the bottom and the finish line is sponsored by Buzzfeed. Institutions, both online and IRL tend to expect very little from us. This is one of the reasons I like the New Yorker. They've been able to maintain a legacy of quality long-form content in the face of a click-bat culture. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand.
-lil, as a professor that has taught throughout this transition, would you agree that the more reading that occurred online, the less students seem to understand/retain?
There is no question that on-line reading has had deleterious effects on my students. I have to take this into account all the time now. While they clamour for a digital version of my handouts so that they can search for relevant terms, I continue to use paper. I give them highlighters and tell them what to highlight as we discuss pages and do activities from the pages. The physical act of highlighting terms and doing written and roleplaying activities -- because it is active and involves hands as well as eyes -- reinforces the material.
I can definitely say that I don't miss newspapers. I'm equally happy, if not more so, reading the news on my computer. I like that hyperlinks exist, and they can lead to some very interesting reading in a way that a newspaper never could. That said, books are king. I won't buy an e-reader until I lack any other choice. Given the abundance of used books, I think that I probably don't have to worry about it in the near future, perhaps ever. While I agree with you that a truly engaged reader may be medium insensitive, I just completely lack any kind of attraction to a Kindle, Nook or iPad. Turning a page as an act can be experiential, especially when reading a very suspenseful or powerful portion of a novel, for example. To me, there's a qualitative divide between informational reading and "pleasure" reading (e.g. a novel, history, or creative nonfiction--I can't find a better word than pleasure at the moment). Maybe I don't get as absorbed reading about what happened to the stock market yesterday, but I don't think I need to be, either. It would be interesting if they repeated the reading comprehension study with a technical or informative piece rather than a work of fiction. In the end, I see no reason why digital and print can't co-exist. They enable different sorts of experiences and are optimal for different sorts of work.Solutions? Problem worth solving? As is so often the case, I think this an issue if the individual lets it become one. If you want to read and understand and remember the content, you will, and if you don't haptics aren't going to help. Some time in iso might.
You know where a newspaper is nice? A bar. Come in for brunch, read the sections you want, steal the crossword or sudoku, but then leave the paper for someone else. Pass it on. I've done that once and it's been really nice. I prefer a newspaper to using my phone for entertainment. I mean, I people-watch, but I can't people-watch constantly. It's nice to actually have an activity besides watching and drinking. Meanwhile, the general reception to reading a book at a bar seems to be that you are stuck up. (I am not saying this is my personal opinion. I'd recommend a thinner book over a mighty tome though if you are going to go this route.)