I am shoring up evidence to present to my users regarding the physiological and psychological (i.e., learning) differences between reading print books vis a vis online texts and wanted to draw everyone’s attention to an important study out of the National Literacy Trust in the UK. In Canada, we used to have a similar group but I believe its funding was cut.
The National Literacy Trust recently released “Children’s on-screen reading overtakes print reading” where ” .…for the first time children are said to be reading more on computer screens and other electronic devices than they are reading books, magazines, newspapers and comics. This is potentially detrimental to children’s reading levels as those who read daily only on-screen are much less likely to be good readers than those who read in print. The National Literacy Trust is calling for a healthier reading balance using both books and technological devices… http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/media/5371
- there seems to be a growing body of evidence that online reading is less engaging and less satisfying (even for “digital natives”). For those of you interested in generalizability of the above study, ~34,910 young people aged 8 to 16 were surveyed; 39% of children and teens read using electronic devices, but only 28% read print materials every day. Those who read only onscreen were three (3X) times less likely to say they enjoyed reading and a third less likely to have favourite reads.
- Young people who only read onscreen were two times less likely to be above-average readers than those who read daily in print or both in print and onscreen.
National Literacy Trust Director, Jonathan Douglas said:
“…our research confirms that technology is playing a central role in young people’s literacy development and reading choice. While we welcome the positive impact which technology has on bringing further reading opportunities to young people, it’s crucial that reading in print is not cast aside.”
I’d appreciate any similar studies that you see as I have most of the major literacy studies due to the reviews in the literature. Thanks, dg
ps. Some of you may know about the phenomenon known as computer vision syndrome. Sore, red eyes from working too much at computer screens. I keep best evidence here: http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Computer_vision_syndrome and use it to discuss with my user groups.
provided a session on statistics in the medical literature. She recommended a book called The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. The content from her workshop will be posted soon.
