Reading is something we regularly do both on paper and on a screen. But the two are not equal: a new study from Spain claims that texts on paper engage the reader much more than digital texts.
The authors of this work, published in the Review of Educational Research, came to this conclusion after analysing over 25 other research studies conducted between 2000 and last year, involving almost 470,000 participants in total.
They found that reading on paper offers a number of advantages. One of them is related to knowledge acquisition: reading a text on paper was seen to significantly improve comprehension.
“From what we know from other studies, the relationship between the frequency of reading printed texts and text comprehension is much higher than what we found for leisure digital reading habits.
“This means, for example, that if a student spends 10 hours reading books on paper, their comprehension will probably be six to eight times greater than if they read on digital devices for the same amount of time,” the research outlines.
Interestingly, this effect varies according to the reader’s level of education. For example, when they read text on a screen, the comprehension level of primary school pupils is less developed than when they read print material.
However, high school and university students have less difficulties than their younger counterparts in processing the content of a document read on a computer, smartphone or e-reader. This may be because children and younger teens are more easily distracted by digital distractions that can come up when they are confronted with a screen.
“We know that our ability to regulate our cognition evolves during adolescence,” study author Ladislao Salmerón said, hypothesising that young children “may not be fully equipped to self-regulate their activity during digital ‘leisure’ reading”.
Nevertheless, the researchers make clear they are not opposed to reading texts in a digital format. “We highlight the different contributions that reading modalities and technological contexts have on our reading comprehension, especially across one’s lifespan,” they write.
In short, reading digital texts may not necessarily be suited to everyone’s needs, but it’s still important to encourage reading in all forms, at a time when this activity is increasingly competing with television and, in particular, social networks.