"Being Online Means Anything But Reading"

I used to think I was very old fashioned for my generation. I’m a bit of a traditionalist and I appreciate books, articles, and journals, and more-so when I am reading the physical copy. However, it seems that many of my undergraduate peers agree on their choice of print reading. When it comes to digital reading, many “people rarely read web pages word by word” (Baron 194). And 80% of University College London students “’always’ or ‘frequently’ printed out electronic documents”. Both of these actions I find myself doing when it comes to reading online.

Now, there are many different pros and cons between print and digital reading, and I find the pros of print out-weigh the pros of digital. Again, Naomi Baron, writer of “Redefining Reading: The Impact of Digital Communication Media”, provides insight as to why many people still cling to their paper copies. One main reason is annotating. It can be argued that most students rarely annotate, and in Baron’s study, “48% indicated that they annotated their textbooks only ‘occasionally’ or ‘never’”. This leaves 52% of students that annotate, which does not seem too farfetched as it sounds because during my lunch, I had observed at least ten people close to me highlighting and underlining in their books. Annotating on paper is much easier than digital. Having the paper in your hands and physically marking down notes helps with understanding the material. Here's an example of my annotations from "Redefining Reading: The Impact of Digital Communication Media". 

Another reason why digital is the least preferred method is because the distractions that comes along with reading online. Alan Liu, chairman and professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says that the “networked digital media do a poor job of balancing focal and peripheral attention”. When reading online, it can be hard to step away from checking what is on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and the countless other social networks. Sandra Aaomdt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, wrote that workers that read online “switched tasks about every three minutes and took over 23 minutes on average to return to a task”. It is unsaid what the readers would switch to, but it most likely a sentence under 140 characters. When Baron asked students about multitasking with reading, “90% replied they were likely to multitask when reading on-screen, compared with only 1% when reading in hard copy”. Students that read digitally find it more difficult to focus strictly on their reading. And by continually switching between reading and Facebook stalking friends, the reader will be unable to retain the information read. More from Baron’s study showed that “51% reported they had better memory for material read in hard copy, and only 2% said they retained more of what they read on-screen”. If readers find it difficult to focus on their reading online, it makes it difficult to remember what they had read.

Along with social networking as a distraction is the use of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are embedded links in a digital article that take the reader to a different website. An example presented by Gloria Mark, professor in the Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, is “while reading online you come across the name ‘Antaeus’ and forget your Greek mythology, a hyperlink will take you directly to an online source where you are reminded that he was the Libyan giant who fought Hercules…. You can follow another link to find out his lineage, and on and on”. This contributes to taking so long to get back to the original task at hand. Mark does counter by saying hyperlinks make it quicker to look up information, but it does make it quicker to be caught up in the irrelevant information.

Since readers do not remember the information read or bother to focus on it, it can be harder to really dig into the reading and create new ideas. And reader can use Ctrl+F and type in the search of their main point. So, instead of absorbing all of the reading material, the reader is able to find the one piece of information they need and forget about the rest of the article. By not reading the full article, the readers do not question, form opinions, or simply comprehend what they read. Maryanne Wolf, John DiBiaggio Professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts, expressed concern with younger generations being immersed in the digital world. “…the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding”. Instead of critically thinking about what they had just read, the readers will finish their reading and quickly go back to their mindless Internet browsing. New ideas and discussions will not arise if readers do not really dig and involve themselves with the reading. Digital reading seems to provide more setbacks than improvements.

Even though I am biased towards print reading, I understand the conveniences of digital. It is more portable and can be easier to read on a crowded train. People usually do not appreciate having pages shoved in their faces. 

(Although, my professor did show a clever way to fix this problem, which can be viewed here.) And digital reading does make it easier to navigate in finding information and topics that the readers are interested in quicker. But, despite these pros of digital, there is just something about print. Having to physically hold the papers, having to dig through the pages of a newspaper and having discovers of articles in sections you may not have ever been interested in. Though, in spite of my bias, I understand that people do not feel the same way. Reading the New York Times can be intimidating and a hassle to dig through to find that one article. And digital readers do not always fall into the trap of reading online. Some readers are able to efficiently read online and use online annotating sites or read without getting distracted and finish a whole article then critically think about the material; I just am not one of them.

Works Cited

Baron, Naomi. "Redefining Reading: The Impact of Digital Communication Media."PLMA 128.1 (2013): 193-200. Print.

Liu, Alan, Sandra Aamodt, Maryanne Wolf, David Gelernter, and Gloria Mark. "Does the Brain Like E-Books?" Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 14 Oct. 2009. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.