please pay attention

Reading in a digital age

Even millennials acknowledge that whether you read on paper
or a digital screen affects your attention on words and the ideas
behind them. What are the implications for how we teach?

By naomi S. Baron

The digital revolution has done much to reshape how students read, write, and access
information in school. Once-handwritten essays are now word-processed. Encyclopedias
have yielded to online searches. One-size-fits-all teaching is tilting toward personalized
learning. And a growing number of assignments ask students to read on digital screens
rather than in print.
Yet how much do we actually know about the educational implications of this emphasis
on using digital media? In particular, when it comes to read-
ing, do digital screens make it easier or harder for students
to pay careful attention to words and the ideas behind them,
or is there no difference from print? Do digital screens make it easier
Over the past decade, researchers in various countries have or harder for students to pay
been comparing how much readers comprehend and remem-
ber when they read in each medium. In nearly all cases, there careful attention to words and the
was essentially no difference between the testing scenarios. ideas behind them, or is there no
(See Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2017 for a review.) How-
ever, such findings need to be taken with a grain of salt. These difference from print?
studies have typically focused on captive research subjects,
mostly college students who commonly are paid to participate
in an experiment or who participate to fill a course requirement. Ask them to read passages
and then answer SAT-style comprehension questions, and they tend to do so reasonably
carefully, whether they read on a screen or on paper. Under those conditions, it’s not sur-
prising that their performance would be consistent across platforms.

naOmi S. BaROn (nbaron@american.edu) is a professor of linguistics, Department of World Languages and

Cultures, American University, Washington, D.C.

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Image: iStock
 But the devil may be in the details. When research- recreational experience to include audio and visual
ers have altered the testing conditions or the types materials, often on demand. But as with writing, it’s
of questions they ask, discrepancies have appeared, an empirical question what the pros and cons are of
suggesting that the medium does, in fact, matter. For the old and the new. Writing is a vital cultural tool,
example, Ackerman and Goldsmith (2011) observed but there is little doubt it discourages memory skills.
that when participants could choose how much time When we think about the educational implications
to spend on digital versus print reading, they devoted of digital reading, we need to study the issue with
less to reading onscreen and had lower comprehen- open minds, not make presuppositions about advan-
sion scores. Schugar and colleagues (2011) found tages and disadvantages.
that participants reported using fewer study strate- To help forward this exploration, my own research
gies (such as highlighting, note-taking, or bookmark- has been tackling three intertwined questions about
ing) when reading digitally. Kaufman and Flanagan reading in a digital age. First, what do readers tell
(2016) noted that when reading in print, study par- us directly about their print versus digital reading
ticipants did better answering abstract questions that habits? Second, what else do readers reveal about
required inferential reasoning; by contrast, partici- their attitudes toward reading in print versus on-
pants scored better reading digitally when answering screen, and what can we infer about how well they
concrete questions. Researchers at the University pay attention when reading in each medium? The
of Reading (Dyson & Haselgrove, 2000) observed third question is more broad-stroked: In the current
that reading comprehension declined when students technological climate, are we changing the very no-
were scrolling as they read, rather than focusing on tion of what it means to read?
stationary chunks of text.
What about research with younger children?
Schugar and Schugar found that students in middle
grades comprehended more when reading print than
when using e-books on an iPad (Paul, 2014) — inter-
active features of the digital platform apparently dis- Students are more likely to multitask
tracted readers from the textual content. However,
the same researchers observed that among K-6 read-
when reading onscreen than in print
ers, e-books generated a higher level of engagement — especially in the U.S. where 85%
(Schugar, Smith, & Schugar, 2013). Working with
high school students in Norway, Anne Mangen and
reported multitasking when reading
her colleagues (2013) concluded that print yielded digitally, compared with 26% for print.
better comprehension scores. Mangen argues that
print makes it easier for students to create cognitive
maps of the entire passage they are reading.
For educators, though, the real question is not how
students perform in experiments. More important is
what they do when reading on their own: Do they I’ve been investigating these questions for about
take as much time reading in both media? Do they a half-dozen years, beginning with some pilot stud-
read as carefully? In short, in their everyday lives, ies in the U.S. (Baron, 2013) and continuing with
how much and what sort of attention do they pay to surveys (between 2013 and 2015) of more than 400
what they are reading? university students from the U.S., Japan, Germany,
Slovakia, and India. Participants were enrolled in
Questions about reading in a digital age classes taught by colleagues, or they were classmates
History is strewn with examples of people worry- of one of my research assistants. Everyone was be-
ing that new technologies will undermine older skills. tween age 18 and 26 (mean age: 21). About two-
In the late 5th century BC, when the spread of writ- thirds were female and one-third male. (For study
ing was challenging an earlier oral tradition, Plato details, see Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2017.)
expressed concern (in the Phaedrus) that “trust in writ- Though my study participants were university stu-
ing . . . will discourage the use of [our] own memory.” dents, I suspect that most issues at play are relevant
Writing has proven an invaluable technology. for younger readers who have mastered the skills we
Digital media have as well. These new tools make would expect of middle-school students and above.
it possible for millions of people to have access to Use of digital technologies is now ubiquitous among
texts that would otherwise be beyond their reach, both adolescents and young adults, and teachers at all
financially or physically. Computer-driven devices levels are increasingly assigning e-books (or online
enable us to expand our scope of educational and articles) rather than print.
16 Kappan October 2017
 Teachers’ views of the broad effects of today’s digital tools

Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree

Today’s students are more media savvy than previous

generations
53% 33% 12% 2%

Today’s digital technologies are creating an easily

43% 44% 11% 2%
distracted generation with short attention spans

Compared with previous generations, today’s students have

fundamentally different cognitive skills because of the digital 40% 48% 9% 2%
technologies they have grown up with

Today’s students are too “plugged in” to digital

technologies and need more time away from them
38% 48% 12% 2%

Today’s students are really no different than previous

generations, they just have different tools through which to 11% 36% 40% 12%
express themselves

Today’s students are very skilled at multitasking 9% 38% 39% 14%

Today’s students are more literate than previous

generations
2% 18% 61% 19%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Source: Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Heaps, A., Buchanan, J., Friedrich, L., Jacklin, A., Chen, C., & Zickuhr, K. (2012, November 1). How teens do research in
the digital world. New York, NY: Pew Research Center. www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/01/part-v-teachers-concerns-about-broader-impacts-of-digital-
technologies-on-their-students/

The study consisted of three sets of questions. In — and least — about reading in each medium. Fi-
the first set, we asked students: nally, we gave participants the opportunity to offer
additional comments.
• How much time they spent reading in print
versus onscreen; print versus digital reading habits
• Whether cost was a factor in their choice of Here are the main takeaways of what students in
reading platform; the study reported in the first set of questions about
• In which medium they were more likely to their reading habits:
reread;
• Whether text length influenced their platform Time reading in print versus onscreen
choice; Overall, participants reported spending about
• How likely they were to multitask when two-thirds of their time reading in print, both for
reading in each medium; and schoolwork and pleasure. There was consider-
• In which medium they felt they concentrated able variation across countries, with the Japanese
best. doing the most reading onscreen. In considering
these numbers, especially for academic reading,
In the next set, we asked what students liked most we need to keep in mind that sometimes reading

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 assignments are only available in one medium or Paying attention to reading
the other, so students are not making independent Students provided open-ended comments to the
choices. second set of questions, which asked what they liked
Cost
most and least about reading in print and onscreen.
In these responses, students praised the physicality of
More than four-fifths of the participants said that print but grumbled that it was not easily searchable.
if cost were the same, they would choose to read in They complained that reading onscreen gave them
print rather than onscreen. This finding was particu- eyestrain, though they enjoyed its convenience.
larly strong for academic reading and especially high They also had telling things to say about the cog-
in Germany (94%). Students (and for that matter, nitive consequences of reading in hard copy versus
K-12 school systems) often cite cost as the reason onscreen. Of all the “like least” comments about
for selecting digital rather than print textbooks. It’s reading digitally, 21% were cognitive in nature.
therefore telling that if cost is removed from the Nearly all these comments talked about perceived
equation, digital millennials commonly prefer print. distraction or lack of concentration. U.S. students
Rereading
were especially vocal: Nearly 43% of their “like least”
comments about reading digitally concerned distrac-
Not everyone in the study reread — either for tion or lack of concentration. When asked what they
schoolwork or for pleasure. Among those who did, “liked most” about reading in print, respondents said,
six out of ten indicated they were more likely to re- “It’s easier to focus,” I “feel like the content sticks in
read print. Fewer than two out of ten chose digital, the head more easily,” “reading in hard copy makes
while the rest said both media were equally likely. me focus more on what I am reading,” and “I feel
Rereading is relevant to the issue of attention since like I understand it more [when reading in print].”
a second reading offers opportunities for review In their additional comments (the last question
or reflection. category), study participants wrote about how long
Text length
it takes to read the same-length text on the two plat-
forms. One student observed, “It takes more time to
When the amount of text is short, participants read the same number of pages in print comparing to
displayed mixed preferences, both when reading digital,” suggesting that the mind-set she brings to
academic works or for pleasure. However, with reading print involves greater (and more time-con-
longer texts, more than 86% preferred print for suming) attention than the one she brings to reading
schoolwork and 78% when reading for pleasure. digitally. In fact, in an earlier pilot study, one student
Preference for reading longer works in print has griped that what she “liked least” about reading hard
been reported in multiple studies. As Farinosi and copy was that “it takes me longer because I read more
colleagues (2016) observed, “If the text requires carefully.”
strategic reading, such as papers, essays, books, the Unexpectedly, several students said reading in print
paper version is preferred” (p. 417). was boring. In response to the question of what they
Multitasking
“liked least” about reading in print, one participant
complained that “It becomes boring sometimes,”
Students reported being more likely to multitask while another wrote, “it takes time to sit down and
when reading onscreen than in print. Responses focus on the material.” Common sense suggests that
from the U.S. participants were particularly stark, if students anticipate that text in print will be boring,
with 85% indicating they multitasked when reading they will likely approach it with reduced enthusiasm.
digitally, compared with 26% for print. The det- Diminished interest sometimes translates into skim-
rimental cognitive effects of multitasking are well ming rather than reading carefully and sometimes
known (e.g., Carrier et al., 2015). We can reasonably not doing the assigned reading at all.
infer that students who multitask while reading are
Is the nature of reading changing?
less likely to be paying close attention to the text
than those who don’t. The biggest challenge to reading attentively on
digital platforms is that we largely use digital devices
Concentration for quick action: Look up an address, send a Face-
The most dramatic finding for this set of questions book status update, grab the news headlines (but not
came in response to the query about the platform on the meat of the article), multitask between online
which students felt they concentrated best. Select- shopping and writing an essay. When we go to read
ing from print, computer, tablet, e-reader, or mobile something substantive on a laptop or e-reader, tablet,
phone, 92% said it was easiest to concentrate when or mobile phone, our now-habitualized instincts tell
reading print. us to move things along.

18 Kappan October 2017

 Coupled with this mind-set is an evolving sense asked to write about, blithely dismissing the obliga-
that writing is for the here-and-now, not the long tion to actually read the full assigned text. Using, not
haul. Since written communication first emerged reading. The more we swap physical books for digital
(in different places, under different circumstances, ones, the easier it is for students to swoop down and
at different times), one of its consistent attributes cherry-pick rather than work their way through an
has been that it is a durable form of communication argument or story.
that one we can reread or refer to. Today, a nexus Finally, contemporary digital technology is alter-
of forces is making writing seem more ephemeral. ing the role of reading in education. Film strips of
A recent Pew Research Center study of news- old have been replaced by far more engaging (and
reading habits (Mitchell et al., 2016) reported that educationally enriching) TED Talks and YouTubes,
among 18- to 29-year-olds, 50% said they often got podcasts and audiobooks. The potential of digital
news online, compared with only 5% who read print media is extraordinary, both because of their educa-
newspapers. While some of us save print news clip- tional richness and the democratic access they pro-
pings, few archive their online versions. Vast num- vide. Yet at the same time, we should be figuring
bers of students choose to rent textbooks (whether out the right curricular balance of video, audio, and
digitally or in print), which means the book is out of textual materials.
sight and not available for future consultation after
the semester ends. True, K-12 students have long Implications for educators
been giving back their print books at the end of the The most important lesson I have learned from
year, and college students have commonly sold books my research on reading in print versus digitally is
they don’t wish to keep. But my conversations now the value of asking users themselves what they like
with students who are dedicated readers indicate and don’t like — and why — about reading in each
they don’t see their college years as the time to start medium. Students are acutely aware of the cognitive
building a personal library. tradeoffs that many perceive themselves to be mak-
ing when reading on one platform rather than the
other. The issue is not that digital reading necessarily
leads us to pay less attention. Rather, it is that digital
If cost is removed from the equation, technologies make it easy (and in a sense encourage
digital millennials commonly prefer us) to approach text with a different mind-set than
the one most of us have been trained to use while
print. reading print.
We need to ask ourselves how the digital mind-set
is reshaping students’ (and our own) understanding
What about public or school libraries? Increas- of what it means to read. Since online technology
ingly, budgets are being shifted from print to digital is tailor-made for searching for information rather
materials. The three primary motivations are space, than analyzing complex ideas, will the meaning of
cost, and convenience. To grow the collection, you “reading” become “finding information” rather than
don’t need to build another wing. Digital is (com- “contemplating and understanding”? Moreover, if
monly) less expensive. And users can access the col- print is increasingly seen as boring (compared with
lection any time of day and anywhere in the world digital text), will our attention spans while reading
with only an internet connection. print generally diminish?
All true. But there are consequences. When I ac- Conceivably, we might progressively abandon
cess a library book digitally, I find myself “using” it, careful reading in favor of what has been called “hy-
not reading it. I make a quick foray to find, for in- per reading” — in the words of Katherine Hayles
stance, the reference I need for an article I’m writing, (2012), reading that aims “to conserve attention by
and then I exit. Had I held the physical book in my quickly identifying relevant information so that only
hand, it might have taken longer to find the refer- relatively few portions of a given text are actually
ence, but I probably would have read entire para- read” (p. 12). To be fair, even academics seem to be
graphs or chapters. Microsoft researcher Abigail taking less time per scholarly article, particularly on-
Sellen has made a related observation. In studying line articles, than they used to (Tenopir et al., 2009).
how people perceive material they read (or store) When it comes to using web sites, studies indicate
online, she says they “think of using an e-book, not (Nielsen, 2008) that on average, people are likely
owning an e-book” (cited in Jabr, 2013). reading less than 30% of the words.
Savvy students are aware of how the computer The issue of sustained attention extends beyond
FIND function lets them zero in on a specific word reading onscreen to other digital media. Patricia
or phrase so as to answer a question they have been Greenfield (2009) has observed that while television,
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 video games, and the internet may foster visual in- Baron, N.S. (2015). Words onscreen: The fate of reading in a
telligence, “the cost seems to be deep processing: digital world. New York, NY: Oxford.
mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, Baron, N.S., Calixte, R.M., & Havewala, M. (2017). The
critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.” persistence of print among university students: An exploratory
Returning to the physical properties of print: If study. Telematics & Informatics, 34, 590-604.
fewer young adults are building their own book collec-
tions and if libraries are increasingly going digital, will Carrier, L.M., Rosen, L.D., Cheever, N.A., & Lim, A.F. (2015).
writing no longer be seen as a durable medium? Yes, Causes, effects, and practicalities of everyday multitasking.
we could always look up something again on a digital Developmental Review, 35, 64-78.
device, but do we? If audio and video are gradually Dyson, M.C. & Haselgrove, M. (2000). The effects of reading
supplanting text as sources of education and personal speed and reading patterns on the understanding of text read
enrichment, how should we think about the future from screen. Journal of Research in Reading, 23 (2), 210-223.
role of text as a vehicle of cultural dissemination?
Farinosi, M., Lim, C., & Roll, J. (2016). Book or screen, pen or
Digital technology is still in its relative infancy. We
keyboard? A cross-cultural sociological analysis of writing and
know it can be an incredibly useful educational tool,
reading habits basing on Germany, Italy, and the UK. Telematics
but we need much more research before we can draw
and Informatics, 33 (2), 410-421.
firm conclusions about its positive and negative fea-
tures. In the case of reading, our first task is to make Greenfield, P. M. (2009). Technology and informal education:
ourselves aware of the effect technology potentially What is taught, what is learned? Science, 232 (5910), 69-71.
has on how we wrap our minds around the written Hayles, K. (2012). How we think: Digital media and
word when encountered in print versus onscreen. contemporary technogenesis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Our second task is to embed that understanding in
our larger thinking about the role of writing as a Jabr, F. (2013, April 11). The reading brain in the digital age: The
means of communicating and thinking.  K science of paper versus screens. Scientific American.

Kaufman, G. & Flanagan, M. (2016). High-low split: Divergent

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