DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Dan Clark

WRD 104

Print or Digital?

            Back in ancient times, you were considered an elite member of society if you could read.   Now, in today’s fast paced life almost one hundred percent of American adults know how to read.  Times have changed, and even more so technology has changed.  Advancements in technology are starting to change the face of reading as we know it forever.   Everything we read is switching from traditional print to digital.  Ipads, e-readers, and smartphones are in use almost everywhere we go.   It’s truly amazing to see how engrossed humans are in our technology, and many say this is a bad thing.  Many people argue that people have distanced themselves from real paper reading and spend too much time staring at a screen.   However, this is an uninformed claim because the benefits of digital reading are extensive.   In reality, the switch from print to digital in reading not only encourages reading but also allows us to interact more with what we are reading. 

            Technology has enabled people to read much more than before; we can bring our books with us digitally wherever we go and are able to access it thought many different mediums such as computers, smartphones, tablets, and even our mp3 players.  Kevin Kelly explains in his scholarly article, From Print to Pixel, that “the amount of time people spend reading has almost tripled since 1980”.  The more ways that people are able to read, the more people read.  This is also because of the way technology has made reading more appealing.  Access to millions of books, magazines, and newspapers from the palm of your hand with sleek looking e-books is fascinating our technology savvy public.   The way animators can make words fly across the screen and words interactive draws the attention of people who have become bored with reading the dull page after page routine that might become boring with a dusty old book.   After I read a Discovery News article called “Readers Grasp E-books Just as Well as Print”, I learned that a popular belief is that people comprehend less of what they are reading when they are reading digitally.  However, the article’s author, Nic Halverson, explains that Dr. Matthias Schlesewsky and his colleagues conducted a study in which the results proved this claim to be false.  The subjects in the study were given three different mediums of reading, two e-devices and a print version, while their brain activity was monitored.  The study concluded with the statement, “Not only did comprehension accuracy show no difference across the three media for either group, young participants showed comparable text fixation durations and EEG theta activity for all three devices. Perhaps most myth-busting is that the older adults spent less time fixating on text and showed lower brain activity (effort) when using a tablet, as compared to the other devices”.  This proves that reading digitally is not only easier to access, but also gives comprehension benefits to the reader.  Digital reading has even more benefits because it allows for a lot more interaction between the reader and the material they are reading. 

            Another huge improvement to the readability of documents, books, and other forms of reading is the interactivity that digital reading provides.  Being able to highlight, enlarge, and seamlessly scroll through text all with the touch of your finger or the click of a mouse is not only more engaging for the reader but also improves reading comprehension.  Guilio Menna, author of scholarly essay, Digital Studying Platforms & Engaged Scholarly Reading, explains that there is a problem with traditional paper reading and it is it does not allow for any interaction with the material you are reading.  “A ‘reactive document’ could fulfill this deficiency and would certainly stimulate critical reading and, ultimately and most importantly, critical thinking” (Menna 7).  This is saying that any form of reading that actually calls for the reader to do some action other than reading while they are reading; it stimulates brain activity in what they are trying to comprehend and inspires critical thinking.  Also, interactive screens allow us to see colorful graphs, charts, and pictures to aid our understanding of the reading.  It brings us away from the dull page after page routine we are used to with books that people, like myself, get bored of and then lose interest in whatever we are reading.  Also, some people may claim that reading on a screen hurts their eyes, which is a proven to happen with pixels.  However, most e-readers use e-Ink technology which makes the words on the screen easier on the eye and reduces eyestrain.  Many people may only have an iPad just because it is the new thing that everybody has to get.  These people do not realize all of the benefits they gain from reading digitally, and interactivity is a huge part of this. 

            In conclusion, I am not trying to put down anybody who still prefers reading the traditional way, rather I am trying to enlighten those people by showing them the massive amount of benefits that digital reading has to offer.  I have not even mentioned the fact that digital reading is saving our environment by preventing the cutting down of trees for paper.  Researching is now much more convenient because we can switch off between hundreds of articles all at the click of a button instead of endlessly searching a large library for the same information.  The digital platforms that are now offered not only encourage us to read more, but also allows for more interaction with our reading which improves our reading comprehension and critical thinking.  Times have changed, so it is time to change the way we read. 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.