Wikimedia Commons. News Media Standards. Wikipedia. April 2016
Have you ever gotten distracted while reading online? You are not alone, a 2013 study showed that twenty-six percent of students said they were likely to multitask while reading in print, compared with eighty-five of percent of students reading on-screen (Niccoli “Paper or Tablet? Reading Recall and Comprehension”). Over the past few year’s digital reading has had a harmful effect on our society, from causing distractions, to a decline in reading comprehension, and the negative effect it has caused on our mind and brain.
Digital technology has had a harmful effect on reading because it causes many distractions. Modern technology has so many different features. It has become a fight just to stay focused for a long period of time when surfing the web, reading online books, listening to music, and etc. Paul La Farge agrees when he writes “the Internet may cause our minds to wander off” (“The Deep Space of Digital Reading”). La Farge is basically saying that the Internet could be a cause of why people get distracted so easily. It is hard not to get distracted while reading online when it comes to social media, pop up ads, breaking media news, and websites like Youtube and WorldStar. It is so easy to take a “break” from homework just to check a tweet and end up watching Youtube videos three hours later. Despite the distractions the Internet may cause, the Internet does have some good effects. For example, when it comes to research. Nicolas Carr states “the web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes” (Is Google Making Us Stupid?”). The Internet is like having a dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and every book in the world at your fingertips.
Although digital technology has created a better way to do research there are many other negative effects. Not only does the Internet cause distractions but it can be the cause of the decline in our reading comprehension. According to Paul La Farge “it’s true that studies have found that readers given text on a screen do worse on recall and comprehension tests than readers given that same text on paper” (“The Deep Space of Digital Reading”). Many studies have shown that the Internet has made it harder for people to understand what they are reading, because now a days the Internet does all the work for you. Your device is willing to read, interpret, and analyze anything you want it to in a click of a few buttons and now with Siri, a matter of a few words. Although it has caused a decline in reading comprehension because we are not forced to understand what we are reading anymore. Nicolas Carr states “Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice” (Is Google Making Us Stupid?”). Even though all people may not understand everything they may read, it is shown that people are reading more in general, which is good. It is good that people are reading more than before, but what is the point of reading more if you do not understanding what you are reading? It is like not reading in the first place because you are not retaining any information, so you are basically coming out with the same information you went out with.
For instance, when I was in high school my twelfth grade English teacher Ms. Bailey thought it was cool to try to create her first online test. She treated it like she had done it before. She prepped us as she would for any other test by making up study guides and review questions. When it came to testing day, we met her in the classroom and then as a class we went to the computer lab. We has ninety minutes to complete the test. I knew I had the test under my belt. I understood everything we learned and got an A on all the quizzes that were in the midst of the lessons. I got to my computer and pressed start on my test, before I realized eighty minutes went by and all I heard was my teacher saying you have ten minutes till the end of class. I hurried up and answered all one hundred-fifty questions. Two days later, my teacher came to me and told me I failed, but she could not understand how. She expressed how I was the best student in her class and how I am always the first one done. I told her I did not know what happened, time got the best of me and I felt rushed. She had a soft spot for me so she let me take it again. This time I was ready. I was alone so there were no distractions, well that is what I thought. I pressed start and began to read question one, before I could finish the sentence something started blinking. My eyes followed the blinking lights to the ad on the right hand side of the screen. It was an ad for tide that would flip through pictures every few seconds. I would look away but my eyes would always find their way back. Before I knew it my teacher gave me my ten minute reminder. I finished in just enough time, knowing I had flunked again. This time she sat me down and asked me what the problem was. I expressed to her that I could not concentrate, because she put the test on a public website; the screen had ads flowing the whole time. Flipping from ad to ad, non-stop. Every time I tried to concentrate a new ad came on, and every one of them got my attention. The next day she came to me and told me to plan to stay after. After school I went to her classroom and on the desk was a printed copy of the test. I sat there for the whole ninety minutes, focused. Results came back and I aced it. The only perfect score in the class.
Ferris Jabr states “most screens, e-readers, smartphones, and tablets interfere with intuitive navigation of a text and inhibit people from mapping the journey in their mind” (“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens”). Jabr’s statement explains why I could not concentrate, the features that modern technology has gets in the way of our path to concentration and causes many distractions. Moral of the story is reading online is very distracting to some, due to ads and other online features. As a result of my personal experience, and the arguments by Ferris Jabr and Paul La Farge against digital reading I have come to the conclusion that digital media has a harmful effect on our reading. Although digital reading has many benefits in today’s world like: the easy access to information and the motivation to read more, to me the negative effects like: the decline in reading comprehension and the creation of pure laziness over rules the positives. The disadvantages outweigh the advantages when it comes to how it has affected us a society, and our reading as a whole. In order for schools more so colleges, to be more equipped to deal with today’s time they have two options. To either provide students the option between print and digital media when it comes to their assignments or take the time to teach students how to properly use the new and improved thing we call modern technology. Even if you give them the option sooner or later they will still have to learn how to use technology properly because the way the world is headed, everything will be paperless sooner than later.