Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
Subjects were never asked which they liked better, and the underlying research report clearly indicates that the differences in their behavior between reading on screen and on paper could be due to their lack of awareness of where to get free ebooks.
Since kids don't have credit cards, they wouldn't be able to buy Kindle books, and might not even have an account. So looking at observational data about what kids use to read books is not a good way to determine what kids "prefer" in this instance. You'd have to give kids the same books in paper and on digital and then see which one they end up reading.
The underlying research is fine, and appropriately nuanced. The article describing it is misleading clickbait.
Neither seems to have a basic understanding of either technology or even perceptions of technology.
>Challenging the assumption that all young people prefer to read on screens
Who believes this? They don't seem to source this claim. It's seems like academic karma whoring. State people believe something they don't actually believe, disprove it so you get karma.
But Getting a tablet has increased the amount I'm reading by at least a factor of 4. It is now so easy to buy books after reading a recommendation online. The free sample feature makes it so I don't buy a book I won't like, And the built in dictionary has me looking up new words without pausing my reading flow.
Physical is great but I don't think I'll ever go back for reading fiction. Having said all that my kids will be getting physical books. The distractions in electronic devices is something I'm still struggling with.
Having four kids myself, I would never have tried to start them reading on a device. Kids don't start reading novels or textbooks, they have books that are physically interactive in a way that doesn't translate very well to a screen. Starting out, children learn by touch and taste as much as with ears or eyes.
Even at ages four to six, many kids need a physical or tactile element to help them learn. My youngest used to love turning the pages back and forth to talk about the differences in the characters of Dr Seuss books like Go Dog Go. The physical interaction of turning a page to demonstrate progression of time in a story is something that doesn't seem to translate as well when swiping or tapping in a tablet.
I speak Japanese as a second language and the dictionary is absolutely amazing for someone like me trying to read a Japanese book.
What's even better is how quickly I can access my highlighted notes. I often find I'm in a conversation with someone and say, "hey there's a great quote on the topic we are discussing from book I read years ago - let me show it to you".
If you really think about it, that´s NOT reading.
We all should go visit https://www.gutenberg.org/ and start reading on a tablet, you know, real books.
I'm also making a serious attempt to distance myself from technology for at least part of the day. Smartphones have essentially taking over my life, and I'm actively removing myself from that as well.
As mentioned above, it's great for linear reading e.g. fiction; poor for computer books.
I find it hard to read any technical book on something other than the computer I'm using it on though. Without being able to copy and paste to try things out on my own I tend to learn absolutely nothing.
Much easier to read one-handed on the train, and having a good backlight makes for convenient reading at night (with the screen brightness turned down enough that it doesn't bother my partner). I've pretty much stopped buying paper books now, while with my old kindle, I'd alternate between paper and digital books.
And two seconds looking their karma and other comments makes it fairly obvious the OP isn't an Amazon shill.
It may just be psychological, but I do seem to fall asleep easier than I did with a regular white LED reading light. At the very least I haven't found myself still reading at 3am wondering why I'm still awake.
The Voyage is supposed to have a warmer backlight mode, but I only have experience with the Paperwhite(I only read during the day anyways).
The original kindle had buttons too, but I didn't own one and only used it a couple times.
I'm not surprised by the study. My 2.5 year old would much rather watch something if the tablet is available than read. Even the interactive and pictures + audio books aren't much competition.
A colleague of mine refers to my bookshelf of datasheets as 'Odd's 20th-century Kindle'. :-)
There have been a couple of times where I wanted to understand how an interesting library or bit of code worked, so I printed the code out and made notes right on the page as I read through it.
I'm sure I could have accomplished the same thing digitally - but for some reason, the knowledge seems to 'stick' more quickly when I'm writing out the notes physically on the same page as the code.
IIRC, one of the developers in 'Coders at Work' liked to print out code he was working on to help him develop an understanding of it. I think it was Josh Bloch, but it's been a while since I've read the book.
All of this is also anecdotal, but I think it's worth a try for anyone who hasn't. It might be useless for most people, but I believe in experimenting with different ways of absorbing information to find out what works best with your brain.
I do this as well, although I usually get a page or two in, figure out what the code does, and regret printing out the rest. Still worth doing, but I need to train myself to waste less paper.
The other bit that I could not live without now is the time-left-in-chapter estimator. It's so much easier for me to get squirreled away for hours because I'll end a chapter and see the next one is only 12 minutes... repeat x 10.
I just... Don't have the freedom with digital copies of things that I do with paper ones, and I refuse to have key knowledge DRM'd. Papers on PDF are alright (as in, I only print really important ones), but proprietary ebooks?
Im not trusting my only copy of professional knowledge to the people who silently removed copies of 1984. That would be insane.
And the advantages from that point are excellent. I can read the same thing on my phone, e-reader or desktop, so it's a very fluid experience whatever I'm doing.
What e-book reader have you tried? The more expensive Kindles have a high resolution, on my Paperwhite the edges of the letters are very sharp just like in a printed book or magazine, no matter how close I hold it to my face. Combined with the right backlight setting and some daylight it really looks like a printed page to me.
Of course, 10 years from now when we've started optimizing our genetically engineered offspring for staring into the black mirror, all bets are off.
I (late 40s) love my eink ereader (a Kobo Aura HD) when reading for pleasure. I also use it for reading a lot of web-page articles away from the computer (via it’s pocket integration). I’ve read 205 books in the last three years[1] and I would say less than five were physical books.
On the other hand, almost all those books were fiction, read for pleasure. I would never read that amount on a tablet screen or any similar screen that emits its own light.
I also find for technical topics, especially if they involve lots of diagrams or tables, I prefer physical over electronic because the ability to navigate around and annotate is so much faster and superior.
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My kids, who are now in the teens and both avid readers, prefer physical books over electronic almost exclusively. They are willing to wait weeks to get hold of a physical version of an eagerly anticipated tome rather than get the electronic version immediately.
The only time my daughter uses an eink reader is when something she really wants to read is only being published electronically, never physically. I have tried to get her interested in a few books or series I think she would like, but with the rare exception was unsuccessful unless I could provide a physical version of the book.
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At the opposite end, my dad (late 70s) who while not quite a luddite is far from a digital native, has expressed interest in getting an ebook reader primarily because he can then change the text to a comfortable size for his failing eyesight.
For an analysis of trends in the industry check out the Author Earnings reports here: http://authorearnings.com/
I should ask her. I do sometimes wonder if there is a bit of subliminal affection for the covers of books, too, to reinforce one's personal identity, which you never get with a black mirror.
But there's more to consider, and eBooks are better and more convenient in every user case that I have.
I still buy a lot of physical books, but only from used book stores, and only when there's unlikely to ever be an eBook. If I'm buying a new book, it's going to be digital. The only exception is for outdoor guide books.
- Non-random access: we are surprisingly good at knowing where in a book something we read was, and flipping back to it. While keeping our finger in the place or places we were. You can build a working stack of locations in paper that's a pain to do in every e-reader I've tried.
- Notes/Marginalia/Markup are available on both, but with vastly more expressiveness and options on paper (though without search)
- Share/re-share/bequeath
- Some evidence of better comprehension and retention of physical reading vs screens.
- No batteries required.
- Attractive physical objects can be a pleasure to own (and a pain in the ass when moving house)
I wouldn't want to annotate or highlight a paper book - that feels like damaging it.
> No batteries required.
Not really an issue for a Kindle-like device - it lasts about 30 days without a charge, which is long enough to read more books than I'd care to carry on a no-electricity trip.
Don't do it with library books obviously, but if you own the book, try it. It vastly improved my reading experience when I started annotating.
Perhaps I'm weird in this sense but I know a couple people who remember stuff similarly. It matters more for textbooks or academic literature where I'm trying to recall specific information; with novels it's not as necessary.
I'm guessing a lot more people could remember the name of a concept that they could then easily search for in an ebook instead - seems a much more direct and practical benefit to me.
Another example is history books with image plates. In a physical book it's easy to flip to the plate section and skim through it rapidly, on a Kindle, no, and of course any color is lost.
There are other aesthetic qualities to books that are often lost, e.g. flip through a copy of Steven Johnson's Wonderland. Notice the color interstitial pages and the way images are integrated with the text. All lost on Kindle.
In general any sort of subtlety in layout/use of fonts is lost on Kindle (e.g. sidebars, or little italics at the margins summarize a given section)
There's of course the obvious issue of ease of passing on/reselling a book.
This is only a partial enumeration of the reasons I've reverted fully to print books after flirting with the Kindle.
As an adult though, I much prefer ebooks, it's more portable and convenient. I do almost all of my reading on e-readers now.
books took several thousand years to evolve.... give them some credit.