The past weeks we had again a lot of digital alarmists, now on reading. Technology is ruining our abilities to concentrate and read. Steven Poole already articulated a good answer in The Guardian, but doesn’t give much information on the research side of things. Daniel Willingham explains in a new must-read blog post why, there is few research available both for good and bad effects.
He does have another explanation:
“A more plausible possibility is that we’re not less capable of reading complex prose, but less willing to put in the work. Our criterion for concluding, “this is boring, this is not paying off,” has been lowered because the Web makes it so easy to find something else to read, watch, or listen to. (I explore the possibility in some detail in my upcoming book, Raising Kids Who Read.) If I’m right, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that our brains are not being deep-fried by the Web; we can still read deeply and think carefully. The bad news is that we don’t want to.”