Slashdot Mirror
The Case Against E-readers -- Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading On Paper
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Rosenwald writes in the WaPo that textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say millennials still strongly prefer reading on paper for pleasure and learning. This bias surprises reading experts, given the same group's proclivity to consume most other content digitally. "These are people who aren't supposed to remember what it's like to even smell books," says Naomi S. Baron. "It's quite astounding." Earlier this month, Baron published Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, a book that examines university students' preferences for print and explains the science of why dead-tree versions are often superior to digital (PDF).
Her conclusion: readers tend to skim on screens, distraction is inevitable and comprehension suffers. Researchers say readers remember the location of information simply by page and text layout — that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner. Researchers think this plays a key role in comprehension — something that is more difficult on screens, primarily because the time we devote to reading online is usually spent scanning and skimming, with few places (or little time) for mental markers.
Another significant problem, especially for college students, is distraction. The lives of millennials are increasingly lived on screens. In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
Her conclusion: readers tend to skim on screens, distraction is inevitable and comprehension suffers. Researchers say readers remember the location of information simply by page and text layout — that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner. Researchers think this plays a key role in comprehension — something that is more difficult on screens, primarily because the time we devote to reading online is usually spent scanning and skimming, with few places (or little time) for mental markers.
Another significant problem, especially for college students, is distraction. The lives of millennials are increasingly lived on screens. In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
The entire supposition that we're all mildly autistic ADHD scatterbrains is idiotic. Anyone who's picked up an e-reader versus a book can easily tell what their preferences are, and millenials aren't some new mutant genotype.
In her surveys, Baron was surprised by the results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent). "When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation to jump ship."
So get a Sony e-Reader (now super-cheap due to being abandoned) or a Nook Simple touch. They technically have internet access, but you can't really browse on them. Not because of the display, because of the browser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anyone reading screens at night should already have an automatic redshifter installed, unless you explicitly need to stay awake for some reason. I use them for all my desktops, laptops and tablets.
The difference on your eyes is, pun intended, night and day.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why, are you illiterate or something?
No, seriously -- if you have to go look up stuff often enough for that to be a big deal, then (a) the book is too hard for you and (b) you're missing the point of reading. You'd lose sense of how the story flows if you keep starting and stopping like that. When you run across the occasional unfamiliar word, it provides a better experience just to figure it out from context and move on.
At risk of feeding the trolls, I have to disagree.
I often have the experience "Oooh, great word! I've always kinda known what that means. Show me more. CLICK... Ooh, I get it now. Nice"
In my opinion, in significantly enhances my reading enjoyment.
Either boomers and millennials are completely different, the millennials need to try a REAL e-reader or I'm unusual. I like reading on my e-ink Kindle with no back-light better than reading a printed book.
They *could* get the definition instantaneously through a link and move on, but is that actually learning?
Seriously? Yes, that's learning! Please tell me you're not calling a dictionary a "crutch". My 8th grade English teacher would weep.
I'm guessing you haven't actually used this feature in a modern e-reader, right? You press and hold a word on the screen, and the definition pops up over the text. You've now learned a new word, and it's taken about five or ten seconds, and you continue reading, now slightly more knowledgeable.
You're reading the book's content to broaden your mind, and trying to puzzle out a new word by context is much more of a distraction than actually learning a new word when it's right there and instantly available. There's nothing noble about taking a harder path to easily obtained knowledge. There are plenty of ways in which a person will need to struggle in order to learn new things. Looking up a the definition of a word shouldn't be one of those.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Thinking of an tablet as an eReader is your problem. In my opinion a true eReader uses electronic ink technology, not a back-lit LCD screen. You do not get the 'keeps me awake' problem when using an eReader. With an eReader you must either read by an external light source, the same way you would with a paper book, or utilize one of the eReaders underlit with a 'glo' light that also doesn't impede sleep.