Electronic Reading - Benefits and Pitfalls

E-readers and electronic texts are relatively popular, with Amazon’s Kindle line of devices and Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader being very common. Apple’s iPads, Google’s Nexus, and other handheld phones and tablets have e-reader options, too, including the Kindle app, available on them. It has been discussed in school board meetings across the United States that we should get rid of paper textbooks and instead invest in e-readers and online textbook options to reduce the cost of having to replace costly texts when they become worn out or outdated. But is this the best answer to the textbook issue?

There are certainly benefits to electronic reading. Cost and money are huge factors when companies and individuals make decisions. When publishers print books, they have to include the cost of paper, ink, and distribution costs into the price of a book. If a book does not sell well, the extra copies of the book get sent back to the publisher or sit on shelves or in warehouses, which is a problem electronic texts will never face. The cost of getting new texts loaded onto an electronic device (once you’ve paid for the initial device) is typically lower than buying a paper-and-ink book. People with visual disabilities can easily change the text size on an e-reader, which is impossible with a printed book. The improving technology means the screens are getting better, so eye strain is less of a problem, battery life is lengthening, and clarity of digital text continues to improve. Overall, there are quite a few positives for e-reading.

However, there are negatives to electronic reading, too. Nicholas Carr, in chapter six of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, argues that there are quite a few downsides to reading online or on electronic devices instead of books. Print books are very linear in nature - start at the beginning and read until the end.  E-books, on the other hand, are somewhat non-linear in their features. You can click on words or links to be taken to different resources, but when you do this, it interrupts your brain’s interaction with the written text. When e-books first became popular, the proponents of the format pointed out the benefit of hyperlinks that could take a reader to a dictionary definition, an encyclopedia article, or other electronic resource while people are reading. However, the devices being connected to the internet actually creates more of a distraction. Choosing whether or not to click on a hyperlink may seem like a mundane task when reading an article or story, but by dedicating some brain processing power to making that decision, you have now taken some of your focus away from comprehending what you are reading, and studies have shown that comprehension deteriorates when there are choices to be made. With connected devices, you can now surf the Internet, click on links, go shopping, or check your email, all while “reading” a book. One person interviewed suggested that e-readers “can help return to us our attention spans and extend what makes books great: words and their meanings.” Mr. Carr followed that quote with a warning from Marshall McLuhan: beware of “the inability to see how a change in a medium’s form is also a change in its content.” Publishers are now considering adding videos, sound effects, and other distractions to electronic books. This will not help us focus on the stories, but instead, they will add to the distraction.

Overall, I see both the benefits and pitfalls of electronic reading. Cost is a huge factor for school districts considering textbook replacement, and many schools are already investing in computers, laptops, or other electronic devices for students, so there is a natural cost-saving interest if cheaper electronic versions of books were available. However, Nicholas Carr would most likely err on the side of printed books having more benefit for students if ease of use and comprehension were considered. There is no question as to how one uses a book. We start at the cover, open the book and read from the beginning to the end. The title and table of contents are in the front, and the glossary and index are in the back. We can use bookmarks or sticky notes to jot down thoughts or questions, but we know how to use a book. Electronic readers are not always as easy to navigate. Student comprehension of text is one of the most important things we focus on in elementary school - how students understand what they are reading. If students were more distracted and had decisions to make that took their focus away from constructing meaning, or as we ask my third graders to do, visualizing the movie in their minds, as they read, we are sacrificing one of the biggest purposes of reading - comprehension and understanding. E-readers do have their benefits, but I will continue to encourage my students and my own children to keep turning those paper pages and watching the movie in their minds.

My Personal Reflections on The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr

Every new medium changes us. Marshall McLuhan, an author in the 1960s, recognized that we sometimes get so caught up in the content or messages coming through new mediums that we fail to notice that the medium itself is changing us in different ways.

When I first started reading Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, I have to admit that I brought into the reading my own personal experiences of reading fewer books (except books for class, of course!) and skipping longer articles and instead looking for snippets or a brief synopsis of an article. I’ve noticed that more news outlets now put bullet-points of the main points of an article below the headline or title, but I hadn’t really considered that I was personally guilty of reading just the highlights until I started reading this book and began to reflect on my reading habits of late. I recognize that time to read has become a luxury - I am very busy, with my daughters and their homework and activities, my 3rd-grade-teacher job and its requirements, and the Designing Digital Literacy in Schools (DDLS) program and its assignments, on top of all of the things I need to do to keep my house from falling down or getting buried under a pile of laundry. However, when I finally got a chance to read this book, I struggled to focus and get into the book. Interestingly, the author described a similar experience of struggling to focus when he was reading, and then highlighted several other people with the same issue. Some people didn’t necessarily think that was a negative thing, though I must confess that I have very fond memories of curling up with a book and reading for hours, immersed in the words written by many different authors. I miss that focused reading time.

I usually just attributed my lack of reading to a scarcity of personal time, which is not totally out of the question. Many of us are quite overscheduled and find ourselves running all over the place, bringing work wherever we happen to be going. However, Mr. Carr focuses a lens on how the advent of the Internet and how all of the information available on the Web 24/7 has been demonstrated to be an effective distractor, which may actually be changing the structure of our brains and how we think, recall, and process information. This book spends several chapters discussing the history of brain research and the understanding of how our brains work to make connections, memories, and understanding. This took me right back to my undergraduate courses in psychology and biobehavioral health, though for a while, I struggled to focus since it felt like long chapters of history. As I was reading, I took the book everywhere I went, in the chance I could find some time to read and jot my thoughts on sticky notes stuck throughout the book. The book title definitely piqued interest in people I met, so I had the opportunity to discuss the concepts about which I was reading, which helped me understand and process my own ideas. This harkens back to our class discussions about Lev Vygotsky and how talking things out (even to ourselves) helps us learn and remember. Through these conversations, I learned that many of us, especially those of us with our own children or who work with kids, are concerned about how technology and the Internet are affecting not only ourselves, but especially the children’s developing brains.

In previous classes in this George Mason University DDLS program, we have discussed information overload, and Dr. Norton suggested it isn’t necessarily overload, but that we are not efficient information processors or filters. We have so much visual and auditory stimuli barraging us at all times that we just stop processing and skim, or flit from thing to thing. Fortunately and unfortunately, our brains have been proven throughout research across the centuries to be very plastic, able to learn new skills, information, and processes when needed. This is good for many reasons, such as recovering from injury or needing to learn new job skills or information. This is also bad because when we teach our brains bad habits or don’t use them wisely, our brains learn from that, as well. “Every time we use the Web, we train our brain to be distracted - to process information very quickly and efficiently, but without sustained attention. Memory consolidation can’t even get started because our working memory gets overloaded” with all of the information and stimuli on the webpage.

“It would be rash to jump to the conclusion that the Internet is undermining our moral sense. It would not be rash to suggest that as the Net reroutes our vital paths and diminishes our capacity for contemplation, it is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts.” One of the points that I initially thought the author was reaching for was that we are potentially becoming less-empathetic people, but once I understood the argument that we need to deeply process feelings, ideas, and emotions to truly be empathetic, I understood where he was coming from. With our brains less-practiced or less capable of thinking and processing deeply, we will not going to be able to understand what other people are experiencing. He also brings into this discussion the idea of people losing the ability to be ethical decision-makers for a similar reason. While reading, I was again reminded of the first semester of DDLS, when we focused on the PICKLE (problem-solving, information-using, community-participating, knowledge-using, literate, ethical-decision-makers), or skills we need to teach our students to be successful members of our culture. So many of the PICKLE skills are tied into the effects researchers are seeing in their studies on Internet-use on brains.

Each time we learn something, our brains neurons and synapses make new connections, and every time we recall something, those connections become stronger and therefore, our memories become stronger. I am “old-school” and still have a road atlas in my car. I use the map to get a “big picture” in my head of my location. Once I have a foundation, I can quickly learn my way around new places because I can see the “map in my head” - I can see how things are connected and where things are in relation to others. I think my comprehension of geography and location is pretty strong. I know people who rely on their GPS or phone maps to tell them every turn, even for local places they have been many times. I wonder if they have any concept of where they are in relation to other places they know. How would they survive without a GPS? Is this evidence of our brains and their connections atrophying because we’re relying on an external decision-making map to tell us where to go? I’ve found I used to know everyone’s phone numbers by heart because we had to either write it down or remember it. Now, I don’t think I could tell you my own sister’s phone number. It’s saved in my phone, so I don’t need to remember it, though I seriously remember the numbers of most of my elementary-school friends.

There have been studies that demonstrate the benefit of processing time, where brains need a break from thinking about problems. We need unconscious thinking time to problem-solve. I’ve noticed this with puzzles and other games - when I take a break and come back to it later (“sleep on it”), I am much better and quicker at solving them. Research has shown that distractions online keep our brains from this purposeful (processing or thinking-time) distraction. According to Carr and his research, we are losing the ability (and possibly willingness) to take a step back and take time to process for a thorough solution. In the age of instant messages, news, videos, tweets, and everything else, our culture does not encourage individuals to take time to think or process a response or solution. I am reminded of reading The Victorian Internet and the invention of the telegraph and how much that changed so much more than communication! The Internet is doing the same thing, but now we can study and see how it is affecting our brains!

As with just about everything in life, I feel that there is a need for moderation - most things in moderation are not terrible for you. Our use of the Internet has overtaken our lives, with our refrigerators, cars, phones, and watches finding ways to be connected, so we feel the need to be connected all of the time. With that connection comes the urge to be checking or connected at all times 24/7, and that bombardment with stimulation is definitely changing our brains and how we think. A shorter attention span and struggling to read a full book cover to cover are symptoms of a larger, concerning issue. We are training our brains to be distracted. As Nicholas Carr suggested, we need to be “wary of what our devices are doing to us.”

A Review of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr has written a challenging book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. It is challenging on different levels. One challenge for me is that I struggled to get into the book, which is ironic given how the author started the first chapter, but it is also challenging because it gives different viewpoints that are not necessarily the popular opinions and asks the reader to consider the implications of new technology on our memory, thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving skills.This is essentially a 228-page affordance analysis of a variety of technological advances, from the invention of the map and clock to the 1445 Guttenberg printing press to the Web (internet). This review will describe the main messages the author is trying to convey with his well-cited 228-page book. In the next parts of the review, I will evaluate the messages I took from the book, share my opinion, and explain some of the potential implications for education.

Mr. Carr opens the first chapter with a description of himself finding it more and more challenging to sit and read an entire book and become immersed in the writing. As an author and (self-admitted) former voracious reader, he realized that this is alarming and seems to be becoming a problem for more than just himself. This appears to be developing into an obstacle for many people everywhere. Some people feel that this is a natural progression as we give more “processing power” and thinking tasks to computers and programs instead of utilizing our brains. As a result of our growing reliance on devices to do our remembering for us, our brains are becoming more efficient at skimming, scanning, and discovering information more efficiently since we can depend on Google, Bing, map navigation programs, calendar reminders, and other external help for reminders and for keeping track of our information. A research psychologist at King’s College in London named Vaughan Bell stated about when humans began reading books that “the ability to focus on a single task, relatively uninterrupted represents a strange anomaly in the history of our psychological development.”

However, Mr. Carr delves deeply into brain research and our understanding of development and the brain’s plasticity to demonstrate how the brain forms short-term and long-term memories and how that process is being interrupted by the way we search for information now on the internet. This is not a new phenomenon. When the map was invented many centuries ago, the human mind stopped relying on what it knew of locations and used the two-dimensional representation to see relationships between places. Several ancient philosophers warned that the use of written word would not help us remember - in fact, they predicted the opposite would occur. Socrates, through Plato’s writing in the fourth century B.C., warned that if people learn to write, “it will implant forgetfulness in their souls: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written.”

The Shallows finishes with a couple of chapters connecting the author’s concerns about how much we are potentially giving up by allowing search engines like Google to essentially be our memory. With the metaphor of our brain being like a computer or machine, he suggests that we are missing the point that when we use our memories and thought processes, we are actually building and strengthening connections between our brain synapses and neurons and creating stronger memories. A computer is a machine that “remembers” instantly because it is not a biological process, and that it can not improve its memory storage. Our brains, on the other hand, are living organs that become stronger with use and more connections. By not using our brains and instead depending on outside “memory storage” and external problem-solving, we are losing more than just our memory and problem-solving abilities, but also potentially our culture, which is often stored in our collective memories. He describes some experiments that were done with helpful versus less-helpful software, and the results seem to demonstrate that people with the less-helpful software ended up being better problem-solvers because they had to figure some things out on their own, whereas the subjects with the more helpful software ended up just clicking until they got the results they wanted because it took out all of the thinking.

In the end, the message from author Nicholas Carr is that as technology becomes more and more adept at solving problems for us, predicting what we may be needing or thinking, and remembering our tasks and information for us, our biological brains will be less capable of doing those things on our own because we are weakening or losing the connections to be deep thinkers, complex problem-solvers, and empathetic people. Is it okay that we are “becoming more agile consumers of data” but may be losing our capacity “to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end?” Nicholas Carr is hoping that there is some backlash to the over-technologizing of everything in our lives so that we can gain some of our mental processing back.