The Detriments of Reading Online
Picking up a book has gotten hard. Not psychically of course, but mentally. We have been ruined by the new wave of short form content and simple, easy reading stories that make it almost impossible for us to sit through traditional reading. It has become difficult to maintain focus on a single thought or action for more than a few minutes before our minds begin to wander.
Online articles and other reading have become to adapt to try and target this new way of thinking, using things like highlighted keywords to draw attention, sub-headings, bulleted lists, shorter paragraphs, and even just shorter written pieces as a whole, often being less than half of the word count of conventional forms of writing.
“…The more we read online, the more likely we were to move quickly, without stopping to ponder any one thought.”
Mary Dyson, a psychologist at the University of Reading, found that online articles will try to maximize the amount viewers will read through manipulating their formatting, saying that “We read more quickly when lines are longer, but only to a point. When lines are too long, it becomes taxing to move your eyes from the end of one to the start of the next. We read more efficiently when text is arranged in a single column rather than multiple columns or sections. The font, color, and size of text can all act in tandem to make our reading experience easier or more difficult.” With all these factors, it is easy to see why people tend to be more distracted when reading online, leading to less comprehension of the text and the inability to enter a deeper state of focus.
I believe that it is important for us to disconnect every once in a while, or even try to retrain our minds to longer forms of media, otherwise we are forced to conform to the ever-shifting landscape which is the media industry, with companies constantly fighting for your attention. Print media can be one of those escape mechanisms, getting us away from the screen and enveloped into the depths of another world, or a story waiting to be told.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 11 Feb. 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/
Konnikova, Maria. “Being a Better Online Reader.” The New Yorker, 16 July 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader
Nielson, Jakob. “How Users Read on the Web.” Nielsen Norman Group, 30 Sept. 1997, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/
“The Source of Bad Writing.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 25 Sept. 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cause-of-bad-writing-1411660188