What do people say about digital reading?
• “I now have totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print ”
• People in general, and young people in particular, are doing more screen reading of digital materials than ever before.
• The decreased reading of print books and of literary genres (novel, plays, and poems)
• Reading skills (such as the ability to identify themes, draw inferences, etc.) are declining too.
• Digital devices prevent people from e ciently navigating long texts, which may subtly inhibit reading comprehension.
What’s the differences between paper reading and digital reading:
| Reading on Papers | Digital Reading |
| The brain regards letters and words as physical objects, and perceive a text in its entirety as a kind of physical landscape. Papers provide brains with such sense of location and landscapes. | Screens may inhibit comprehension by preventing people from intuitively navigating and mentally mapping long texts. (locate) |
| Paper is easier to read for eyes. | Screen results in higher levels of stress and tiredness.(displace) |
| Reading on papers results in more efforts made from readers, which brings higher concentration and memory of the content. | When reading on screens, individuals seem less inclined to engage in metacognitive learning regulation setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way.(efforts) |
| More long-term memory; less working memory. | More working memory; less long-term memory. |
| Our brain is more familiar with literary reading. | Hyper reading tends to affect brain’s structure, making it harder to concentrate: a media-induced state of distraction. |
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Reading online requires several practices:
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What should we do?
• Understand the differences between reading on paper and reading on screens, and know how to cope with them differently.
• Combine close reading, hyperreading and machine reading.
• We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand.
Digital Literacies 