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."

Comments

But...

[sugapablo]

Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit over and beyond the simple fact that so many of the world's classics are available free of charge wherever you have internet access is a bonus that can't be overlooked. Honestly, in terms of studying books such as Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, I find myself eternally grateful for such capabilities. Not to mention, if you can read the book on your cell phone, you always have the right reading material on the toilet. :)

Re:But...

[Irate Engineer]

Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit over and beyond the simple fact that so many of the world's classics are available free of charge wherever you have internet access is a bonus that can't be overlooked. Honestly, in terms of studying books such as Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, I find myself eternally grateful for such capabilities.

Maybe. For certain books, perhaps ones with lots of foreign words or jargon, this could be an advantage, but sometimes there is such a thing as too much information. Maybe a literature student reads a word with which they are unfamiliar in a text. They *could* get the definition instantaneously through a link and move on, but is that actually learning? Did they lose track of the narrative by this distraction? What if the student struggled a bit but worked out the meaning from the context instead, and then later verified the definition?

Instant web access can supplement, but it also can be an overused crutch that inhibits critical thinking and learning skills. I'd be interested to know the breakdown by degree for the data presented.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

You made her point without meaning too. Being able to "jump to Wikipedia entries" and have definitions pop up are DISTRACTIONS, that can take away from the comprehending and retaining the original content.

Re:But...

[RandomAdam]

Agreed; I love my Kobo Aura HD; I very rarely use the light function preferring to use regular lights until I want to go to sleep, just like the tree meat books, and it lasts weeks between charges.

I can't read for pleasure on a glowing screen it is always distracting.

Re:But...

[AthanasiusKircher]

Why, are you illiterate or something?

Ad hominem modded "insightful"? Seriously, the mods are feeding the trolls now? Alas, since this is modded up, I'll risk a response....

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

Some people like to challenge themselves once in a while. By your logic, we should never move beyond our elementary school readers.

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.

Gee, there's only one possible "point of reading"? And here I thought that one of the primary "points of reading" was to understand what the author was saying... which you can't very well do if you don't understand the words.

You're also talking about "stories" -- what about non-fiction? Or what about classic literature, which may use language a bit differently?

In all seriousness, one of the primary reasons why the written word was invented was so it could preserve information... whether that be stories or non-fiction or whatever. Why? So that other people can learn about it. The idea that reading only functions as entertainment is a modern phenomenon.

And if you're using reading to learn things, you should be prepared to encounter new ideas, which often may involve new words. I have taught graduate-level courses at universities, and one of the things I strongly encourage students to do is look up recurring words that they don't know. If you don't do that, you won't understand the text. And part of the learning process is often having a challenging reading that allows you to expand your ideas, which usually involves some new vocabulary at the same time.

When you run across the occasional unfamiliar word, it provides a better experience just to figure it out from context and move on.

Yes, that's a great exercise, and if you're in the middle of a fast-paced novel, it's probably a reasonable idea. But if you're actually trying to understand what an author is saying, and there's this word popping up a dozen times that you don't know, simply guessing what it means is missing an opportunity to learn something.

And recurring words are great for that kind of exercise, because it provides periodic reinforcement, which is one of the keys to learning natural language and recalling new things. Most authors -- even those who write "stories" and fiction -- tend to have "pet words" that aren't part of the standard core vocabulary everyone uses. When you see such a word and look it up, each time the author uses it again you'll reinforce that word. Suddenly, by the end of the book, you'll have expanded your vocabulary by a dozen or a few dozen words. (And you're more likely to remember the meaning than if you had just memorized the word for a vocab test or something -- seeing practical usage will aid recall.)

How else does one ever get to read books that are "too hard for you," as you put it? Or should we just ignore such books? By this logic, unless you were born with a giant vocabulary or hang around with people who use big words all the time, you're obviously not destined to read such weighty tomes....

If I were a publisher, I'd definitely agree

[Austerity Empowers]

But I'm not, and eBooks are awesome. I don't have physical space for dead trees in my house, and I can't imagine millenials are doing any better. Let's face it, most stuff we read for pleasure doesn't need to be recalled with anything other than casual clarity. We're not hanging on to carefully wordsmithed literature, we're reading mass market fiction with a good story but relatively low literary value.

Publishers need to return their money to the shareholders so the rest of the world can get on with life.

Luddites can keep their dead trees.

[kuzb]

For me, being able to haul around thousands of books and references on a 200 gram e-ink device that goes weeks on a single charge, syncs my current page to all other devices, allows access to dictionaries and wikipedia, and allows easy annotations outweighs all other potential benefits of classic books.

Re:The temptation to jump ship

[blackest_k]

Kind of the problem with ereaders is pdf files all seem formatted for A4 paper and are pretty bad on a computer screen and even worse on an ereader like looking at a room through a letterbox.

reformatting them is a nightmare too.
 

Re:As a millenial

[AuMatar]

I read several novels a month. But I wouldn't read a technical book on an ereader if you gave it to me for free and paid me to do it. And I've tried- I originally bought it thinking it would be great for tech books. But the slow speed of page switching, the inability to flip through pages rapidly, the reduced area per page all make it an unbearable experience. Ereaders are good for fiction reading, they're completely unsuitable for anything that isn't read beginning to end with no branching or backtracking.

Sick and tired of "Digital Natives"

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy hell am I ever sick and tired of the term "digital native".

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. My first computer was a TI-99 4/A with 16 K of RAM. Then a Commodore 128, Amiga, etc. I've been a "digital native" as long as I can remember.

I went back to university a few years ago (when I was in my 30s), and those digital native kids that I was taking classes with? Well they couldn't compute their way out of a paper bag. Sure they might know how to use Facebook - but native? Hardly. They still didn't understand the difference between a hard drive and RAM ... and they still made all the same bone-headed mistakes using a computer as their clueless peers in the 1990s made (hey! I just got a weird email with an attachment! Let me open it and see what it is!)

After graduating, I ended up working for the university, helping profs integrate and use technology in their courses - and every prof was under the mistaken assumption that these kids were somehow technologically gifted, just by virtue of having been born in the late 80s/early 90s.

Ridiculous. Kids today aren't digital natives.