Are E-Books Making Us Stupid?

[Geremia]

International Journal of Digital Library Systems, 3(2), 27-47, April-June 2012 27
Are E-Books Making Us Stupid? Why Electronic Collections Mean Trouble for Libraries and Their Patrons
Nancy McCormack, Queen’s University, Canada
E-BOOKS AND LIBRARIES
Summary

• In 2011, Library Journal published the results of a survey which confirmed what most people already know - that e-books were becoming much more prevalent in libraries of all types.
  
• In August 2010, Stanford University`s new engineering library opened with 85% fewer books than it once had. When asked about the future of the library, Stanford library director, Michael Keller said that eventually there would be no books at all - everything would instead, be available in digital form (Sydell, 2010).
  
• One private high school in Massachusetts, for example, recently removed all the books from its library replacing them with computers and Kindles (Carr, 2011). More dramatically, in May 2011, the Florida legislature passed an education bill which set up a timeline for educators to move from print to digital textbooks. The provisions of the Act require paper textbooks to be replaced with virtual versions by the 2015-16 school year.
  
• In the past, libraries rarely, if ever, were required to sign a contract when buying a physical book. Today, contracts are par for the course when libraries acquire e-books, and most of these contracts shift control heavily in favour of the publisher.
  
• Cost, of course, will become a major problem - keeping track of the myriad of pricing, perpetual access and licensing models. (Fisher, 2010). New and creative fees which could never have been foreseen in the world of print are now being introduced.
  
• Observers of the e-book phenomenon have noticed that despite the much advertised savings in the costs of printing, paper and distribution, the prices for certain types of e-books - in particular scholarly works and textbooks - have not dropped dramatically at all, and the limitations on the use of such works tends to raise eyebrows. Some e-books textbooks, for example, are programmed to expire at the end of a term so that students cannot sell or lend them. Once textbooks have expired, students have nothing to consult or refer to in subsequent years. In addition to this artificial phenomenon of the expiring textbook, most e-books also contain built-in software locks which prevent users form doing various forms of downloading, printing and/or emailing (Falk, 2011).
  
• Perhaps the most common complaint is that reading e-material on the screen causes eye strain and fatigue (Spalding, 2009). Another problem is navigation; the traditional method of flipping between the pages of a physical book becomes that much harder with an electronic device (Berg 2010). The reader of a physical book can bookmark several pages and flip back and forth between those pages and the index or table of contents. That can be quite burden-some with an e-book, and can easily frustrate the reader who is then more likely to cut short his or her use of the work in question.
  
• The main reason students gave for not using e-books was that they did not know where to find them. The second major reason, however, was that students preferred print books (46% in 2008 and 44% in 2011). Other studies too have confirmed that, when given the choice, a surprising number of students prefer print. At the University of Washington, for example, researchers recently monitored graduate students who were given Kindles. By the end of the school year, it was noted that “nearly two thirds of the students had abandoned the Kindle or were using in only infrequently. Of those who continued to use the e-reader regularly, many had “switched to a different and usually less desirable reading techniques” (Carr, 2011)
  
• Similar studies involving elementary-age students confirmed these results- students were found to be less likely to remember information from a source that has text as well as pictures and animations (Eastin, Yang, & Nathanson, 2006).
  
• But it`s not only brain researchers who have sounded the alarm about the potential harmful effects of online usage. Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, for example, has commented that the sheer amount of information which individuals are exposed to when they use electronic sources is a barrier to deep thinking and understanding. Task-switching (particularly where the tasks are not routine such as learning and research,) he notes, “impedes the formation of memories and makes learning more difficult… When we take in too much data too quickly, as we do skipping between links, our working memory gets swamped. We suffer from what brain scientist call cognitive overload” (Collins, 2010)
  
• In addition to the problem of task switching and distraction, researchers are also worried that the online environment is creating a generation of “viewers” rather than readers.
  
• 85% of users spend less than 1 minute on a page when reading an e-book, and only 5.5% of students read the entire book.
  
• The report also noted that readers were not reading digital material in the way in which one would expect print to be read. Instead, researchers reported observing new forms of “reading.” Users were “power browsing” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins.” The report continued, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense” (Rowland, 2008).
  
• “No one is doing any serious reading at all online,” Nicholas explained. “Users are engaging in “power browsing,” he continued, “ with sessions lasting only three and a half minutes on average, with a relatively short time spent on any single site. Users spent as much time searching as viewing the content” (Wilkie, 2008).
  
• What all of this research reveals is that deep reading of longer passages is generally done away from the computer. Again, at least one reason for this has to do with the distractions inherent in online sources. University of Toronto professor Keith Stanovich who studies reading and children, notes that the multi-tasking and “simultaneous things to do on the screen will ensure that no deep reading takes place…” That`s why book reading is best for deep reading. The idea that children looking at screens are taking in, at a deep level, information from many different streams is a falsehood” (Barber 2011).

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originally discovered on: "Are E-Books Making Us Stupid?" LibGen forum post

[hobnail]

From my casual scanning of what the OP quoted it sounds like she's talking about web pages, not e-books. The title sounds like the typical alarmist headline that CNN would use.

From my experience the bigger problem is that young people prefer watching a youtube video rather than read a web page or a book.

[Sarmat89]

The problem lies with the low affordability of e-readers. The low-end devices still use lo-res fragile glass Carta screens, making scrolling and marking text unpractical.

[Uncle Robin]

Why reference an alarmist "woe for the good ole days" article from nearly 10 years ago?

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Why reference an alarmist "woe for the good ole days" article from nearly 10 years ago?

Good one; I didn't even see that.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Why reference an alarmist "woe for the good ole days" article from nearly 10 years ago?

Yes, and it's more about digital content in general, which is often badly done. In respect of title, consuming web pages, ebooks or video doesn't make you stupid any more than paper or real plays, opera, ballet, concerts etc. It's what you choose and more importantly what you do with it that affects you and others. Only consumption of metal contaminated food, certain drugs, certain illnesses and head or brain trauma (accidents, being attacked, oxygen deprivation, mismanaged contact sports etc) are going to make you stupid, not any particular method of reading.

It's an old click-bait article.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

The problem lies with the low affordability of e-readers. The low-end devices still use lo-res fragile glass Carta screens, making scrolling and marking text unpractical.

Low resolution (Kindlle Basic 167 dpi) is bad. The eink doesn't suit scrolling. Paging (invented instead of the scroll) is far better than scrolling. There is nothing wrong with glass substrates on a well designed ereader and nothing wrong with Carta. Markup (annotation) is fine if the font is big enough. I use a bigger font for proof reading than pleasure reading on my 300 dpi ereader. When was the last time you bought a paper book as a scroll?

It’s true a decent ereader is a similar price to cheap tablet, but a laptop or popular Apple or Samsung tablet can be x5 the price. No doubt Amazon could give them away if you signed up to a 2 or 3 year subscription, but that ought to be opposed. It would destroy innovation and competition.

[ZodWallop]

We live in a world where Toddlers in Tiaras, Amish Mafia and The Real Housewives of... are things and The Transformers have become a blockbuster franchise.

And we're worried that it is e-books that are making us stupider?

[DiapDealer]

Not mention living in a world where drivers have to be specifically told with signage that the road they're driving on has no edgelines.

[hildea]

Item 4, 5, and 6 aren't necessary consequences of ebooks, they describe how unbridled capitalism is bad for reading and learning.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Not mention living in a world where drivers have to be specifically told with signage that the road they're driving on has no edgelines.

I don't drive so I'm not up on the latest car technologies. Could that be a reminder that you shouldn't be relying on lane-assist (or lane departure technology) at that time? I wouldn't be surprised if most people needed a nudge for something like that.

Back on topic, I used to work on some complicated stuff, and I found that reading the documents and specs on the computer made me dumber compared to reading printouts on paper. It took pushing my brain to the limits to notice the difference. I always had the feeling that my brain was doing something else when staring at the screen, and that I could focus better when looking at paper. So, such studies fit with my personal experience. However, for 99.9% of my reading where I didn't have to think as hard, reading off of a monitor was fine. Since then, I find that E-Ink displays aren't as distracting as computer monitors, so I do a lot of my spec/document reading on my ereaders.

[jhowell]

What was the question again?

[Geremia]

Originally Posted by hobnail

The title sounds like the typical alarmist headline that CNN would use.

Though this article is not restricted to web-browsing, its title is based upon that of Nicholas Carr's 2008 article “Is Google making us stupid?”

[Geremia]

Originally Posted by Quoth

consuming web pages, ebooks or video doesn't make you stupid any more than paper or real plays, opera, ballet, concerts etc. It's what you choose and more importantly what you do with it that affects you and others.

👍

I assume you also don't believe in smartphone "addiction", either.

[Geremia]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's an old click-bait article.

Don't judge it solely by its title.

The article is good because it overviews e-book adoption and how most people aren't habituated to it yet.