Why books matter…

Friday, January 19, 2024. Research like this validates my number one vice….books!

The downside of digital devices…

In an earlier post, I discussed how nurturing it is to instill in your child a love of reading as a source of pleasure and delight.

I also discussed research which assured us that reading is a wonderful habit to encourage, because it will also protect their mental health during these difficult and contentious times.

But In this post, I’ll discuss how your kids should read…

Breaking 2023 research estimates that a student who spends 10 hours reading a book will have improved their comprehension up to 8X more than if they used a digital device, such as a laptop, or a smartphone.

• This breaking new study has enormous implications for children, and their optimal development.

• Reading traditional print publications is far more effective in boosting reading comprehension than reading online.

• The researchers are not sure why, but they posit that it may be due to a toxic synergy between lower quality content that is so pervasive online, and the inherently distracting nature of digital devices.

Humans also don’t actually tend to “read,” in any formal sense, online.

Instead, we seem to skim through online materials, without fully attending to what we are actually taking in, if anything.

Although we are unsure if the reasons, we know this much; there is a significant difference in the quality of learning resulting from engaging with digital or print content.

How the study was conducted

The researchers reviewed 25 studies on leisure reading habits on digital devices published over more than two decades, including almost half-a-million people. This was a meta-literature review, a study of studies.

My readers know that I tend to report on research that is comprised of “studies of studies,” because these findings tends to be most compelling and significant.

Ms. Lidia Altamura, the study’s first author, summarised the findings:

“In sum, for developing readers, leisure digital reading does not seem to pay off in terms of reading comprehension, at least not as much as traditional print reading does.

Our findings are particularly surprising when you compare them to what we already know about the well-established positive association between reading frequency in print and text comprehension.”

The researchers acknowledge that there is good stuff online.

While the researchers concede that reading Wikipedia, or a high-quality content salons such as the Marginalian, is obviously an option, most of us find that their attention is directed to sites that excite emotionality as we skim through a barely-literate, incredibly dumbed down, social media platform.

However, here’s the thing. The researchers found little difference between the two in terms of improved reading comprehension, explained Ms. Altamura again explains their findings:

“We expected that digital leisure reading for informational purposes, such as visiting Wikipedia or other educational webpages, or reading the news, would be much more positively linked to comprehension.

But even that was not the case.”

Digital media is simply an inferior method for reading comprehension.

This is true for all humans, no matter their age, according to this new study.

The youngest humans are impeded the most…

When the researchers broke down their findings by age, younger kiddos were the most seriously impacted.

• This is noteworthy. For pre-teen kids indeed, more online reading was actually correlated with a worse score in reading comprehension.

• Online reading comprehension got a little better with teens, ticking a bit upward during adolescence, but reading on a screen was still inferior to reading a book when it comes to improving comprehension.

So it sort of logically follows that parents would do well to encourage their children to read more print and consume less online content.

Ms. Altamura offered a useful caveat:

“Based on our results, we cannot just assume that all leisure reading will be beneficial for developing readers.

The medium used matters.”

It certainly does. Fill your home with books as a viable alternative to screens.

Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.

RESEARCH:

Altamura, L., Vargas, C., & Salmerón, L. (2023). Do New Forms of Reading Pay Off? A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Leisure Digital Reading Habits and Text Comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231216463