Reading on Screens

The article “Everything Science Knows About Reading” by Annie Sneed addresses the relation between adapting to read onscreen and readers’ comprehension. According to the article, readers understood onscreen text less than that of paper due to poor time management and skimming for keywords and phrases. While reading this article, I caught myself wanting to skim and skip over sentences I didn’t believe to be important. By catching myself doing this, it helped me understand the possible negative effects of our brains adapting to read electronically by searching for important information to avoid overload.

The second article, “Reading in a Whole New Way” by Kevin Kelly, addresses a similar topic: shifting from a time reliant on books and physical media to a time reliant on screens and digital media. Whereas the previous text focused mostly on the aspect of understanding, this one focuses mainly on how technology is becoming a bigger part of our world. Screen appear everywhere and act as databases, which books can’t accomplish at the same level. Kelly implies that although these advancements provide access to an infinite amount of data, they have potential to create dependency and a disconnect from the physical world. Considering this was written in 2010, I would say the author’s prediction in the last paragraph is accurate to the present. While it’s nice to see how far we’ve come with advancements, it’s also a bit scary to see how fast they’re changing our lives.