“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” is an article written by Ferris Jabr and shows the relationship between reading on paper versus a computer screen and how they affect things like your memory and comprehension. The article shows that reading on paper is much better in many scenarios because people seem to remember the information more and can understand it better (The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens).
The author of this article is Ferris Jabr who is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. He received a master’s degree in journalism from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in science from Tufts University. Jabr has written a wide variety of articles that span from things like the sciences, nutrition, nature, and technology. For example, some of the articles he has written are called, “How the Brain Ignores Distractions” and “Why Exercise May Be the Best Fix for Depression”. We can tell the credibility of the main article through his credentials, past articles, and the sources.
The audience of this article captures a wide variety of people. This article doesn’t pertain to a certain gender because since this article is about the differences between reading on a screen versus on paper, that means any gender can relate to these topics. The main differences come with age and wealth. If you’re consistently reading both on a screen as well as on paper and is interested in the effects of these actions, then you’re probably in the range of a 16-year-old up to 65-year-old. Kids younger than 16 are not interested in the details of how reading on an iPad affects them. They also are probably only playing mobile games and not actually reading articles or books related to these things. Any older than 65 years old, and you most likely won’t see them reading a lot on electronic devices to where they will be interested in this sort of thing. The audience is also either middle to upper class for them to be able to afford electronic devices like iPads, iPhones, or computers. If you are not reading on these devices, then there is not a reason to be interested in articles about them.
The purpose of this article was to the show the pros and cons of reading on a screen versus reading on paper. The article mostly supports the idea that reading on paper is better because it helps with things like memory and comprehension. A big part of what helps you do this is how you navigate through the text. Since in a book or a paper is a physical thing, this means you have four corners which you can relate the words to and you can write within the margins any notes that could help you. Luckily, most people prefer paper books over electronic ones anyway. Jabr references research for Microsoft and it is stated that “Participants in her studies say that when they really like an electronic book, they go out and get the paper version.” (qtd. in Sellen). This shows that even when they own the electronic version of the book they still believe they don’t own it until it is in paper form. Even though people read a lot on screens and could be affected by the cons of it, when they can read it on paper form they will reap the benefits of doing so.
The context of this article is that it was written on April 11, 2013 and was publish by Scientific American. Scientific American is known to be very credible with many famous people contributing to it including Albert Einstein. Their articles are known to not include bias and cite many other scientific sources as evidence. This allows us to trust in the information in this article and take what they say about reading online as truth. The problem arises when we look at the date that it was published. Since it was published more than 5 years ago, it’s getting to the point where it becomes less credible. This is because much more research could have been conducted on this subject from then up until today. Although it is not too long ago that we should dismiss this article entirely, but there may be more recent articles on this topic that could show updated information that we should look at instead.
The genre of this article, or what form of writing this is in, is that it is a scientific online article. It can be found on any electronic device including computer, iPhones, or iPads. This is interesting because this article focuses on the difference between reading online versus on paper. Since this article is online, we suffer from the same affects such as worse comprehension and memory while reading it like the article points out. The publisher and author should want us to remember and comprehend all the information they put out so when they talk about how when you read online it’s worse for you, things seem to be a little backwards.