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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."
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. :)
Sugapablo
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.
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.
I only skimmed the summary.
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.'"
Considering that most likely 2/3 of the people polled are textbook publishers and bookstore owners, and 1/3 students that isn't a surprising finding, How about JUST polling readers.
Searching is the killer app of e-readers (or just PDFs) to me. Even if I have a physical book, which is sometimes easier to reference, I like having a PDF that I can search in. Fiction, nonfiction, reference manual...doesn't matter, still want search.
My librarian wife and I are both pretty avid readers and we both use e-readers for vast majority of our reading. Inevitably someone will see us in the doctor office waiting room or some other place reading our ebooks and tell us how they prefer "real books". That's when I like to ask them what the last book they read was and chuckle to myself when they get that deer in the headlights look.
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
I prefer eBooks for pleasure reading because of the convenience of packaging mostly. I like the fact that I can take a whole library of books with me and choose which ones I read on a whim. Reading for pleasure is also a serial activity where you read through the book from start to finish with very little back flipping. For studying however, I prefer the physical books as you can dog-ear, color-code post-it, highlight sections for quick reference. Yes eReaders have search and bookmarking capabilities, but I just don't find it as convenient as going back to my yellow post-it half way in the last chapter which I've scribbled with a keyword.
Our Corgi chewed up my entire GOT collection but won't touch an e-reader.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I like having and reading physical books. I really can't explain why, so I do not have much to contribute.
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.
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.
Try a real e-reader, not that Sony piece of crap. I would have thrown that Sony against the wall the first time it took an hour to do anything. Try a bottom-end Kindle. It's way better than what you describe.
f.lux
No, I am not swearing at you. The software is research based also, not just a gimmick.
Of course this does not mean it is 100% bulletproof
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.
I agree wholeheartedly that the eBook experience *could* be much better than physical books, but it isn't.
As an experiment, I recently picked up a reader and tried it (Sony eReader). Here's what I found:
Um... well. .. well, There’s Your Problem....
I've had a Kindle for 5 years now. My first was the Kindle keyboard. I now have the new Kindle Voyage. Not only that, but I can actually speak to the topic of using a Kindle for University as I bought text books for one of my Masters Degree classes, as an experiment.
- The Kindle e-reader has no glare. In fact, the e-Ink screen is SO good that you can read outside in bright sunshine with no problems whatsoever. I love being able to read on the beach.
- The Kindle is instant on when in sleep mode and can last for weeks. Just make sure to turn Wifi off.
- You can look up words
- I'm not sure how well it handles PDF files as I never use it for that. That's what I have my Android tablet for.
- You have all kinds of text formatting options with the Kindle
- You can easily bookmark locations in the Kindle and got back to that exact spot.
The Kindle is great for reading books. It lets you annotate, you can perform search, etc.
That being said, it isn't a book. With a book you can highlight, dog ear, make notes in the margins, etc. When I used a Kindle for my Masters course, I found that it was very good in some respects. For example, you don't have to carry a heavy book with you, it's more convenient to read when in the office, you can search for terms and look them up, etc. However, note taking was too restrictive. You can't, for example, draw a diagram or draw on the existing diagram. It's easier to find a place/topic in a book by just flipping through it or dogearing a page. You can use different colored highlighters, etc.
One of these days Amazon will come out with a touch screen color e-ink e-reader with a stylus that lets you create free-form notes. When you can actually take hand written notes in class and insert those notes as pages in between the actual pages of the e-textbook, that's when you will see e-readers take off as text book replacements.
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.