The latest statistics tell us more kids are reading e-books.  But the progress bar has not advanced nearly as far as prognosticators expected or manufacturers hoped.  A Bowker executive, addressing a recent Digital Book World conference, reported on findings culled from a survey of about 1,000 teens and some 2,000 parents and caregivers of young children.  Among older kids, 19% have tried e-books but only 6% read them witn any regularity. As for younger ones, only 25% of parents even own an e-book reader.  Among children 7 to 12 only 13% read on e-readers and 11% on tablets.

Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  Though more and more adults are adopting digital reading habits, they are encouraging their kids to read print books and in fact promoting something akin to Luddism, such as sending them to schools where no digital devices are to be found (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  At bedtime they will put their Nook or Kindle down and go into their child’s bedroom to read a print-book bedtime story. So  when it comes to e-books it’s a matter of Do as I say, not as I do. And though picture book apps, including stories that “tell” themselves without parents present, are great fun, they just don’t seem to have the same appeal as the warm body and familiar voice of mommy or daddy.

Schools and libraries do not seem to be tripping over themselves to promote e-reading either. One good reason is that the children’s print business is one of the few sectors of the publishing industry that are thriving, so there is a strong financial incentive for publishers to maintain the p-book status quo.

But children form their own opinions about e-books and many reject them for very practical reasons. Because mobile phones are the device of choice for teens, the small screen size and short battery life are deterrents to e-reading.  The price of e-readers is prohibitive for many kids, who get along fine with borrowing books from the library or from each other.  And speaking of borrowing, DRM restrictions on sharing e-books is another dampening factor for teens, just as it is for adults.

For years we have expressed skepticism that, due to their high distraction quotient, screens are the best medium for young readers (see The Medium is the Screen, the Message is Distraction), and (with the exception of autistic children), there has been little recent evidence to the contrary.   In a recent New York Times article, K, J. Dell’Antonia reported an observation by Lisa Guernsey of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative that “when we read with a child on an e-reader, we may actually impede our child’s ability to learn.”

“Children sitting with a parent while an e-reader reads to them, Dell’Antonia writes, “understand significantly less of what’s read than those hearing a parent read. Researchers at Temple University, where the study was done, noted that parents reading books aloud regularly asked children questions about the book: ‘What do you think will happen next?’ Parents sitting with the child while a device read to them (like a LeapPad or some iPad apps) didn’t ask these questions, or relate images or incidents in the book to the child’s real life. Instead, their conversation was focused on how to use the device: ‘Careful! Push here. Hold it this way.’” (Details in Why Books Are Better than e-Books for Children)

Does that mean that the next generation will reject e-books?  Not likely.  But as research develops about the reading habits and learning and retention of children using e-books, we may see a greater balance between electronic and printed books than the e-fatuation that has us in its grips today. If we don’t – well, see Digital Distractions Producing a Nation of Morons?

Richard Curtis

“Amazon, Gmail, I’ve seen all sorts of shopping, I’ve seen eBay. You name it, I’ve seen it,” says Dr. Stephen Luczycki.

What has Dr. Luczycki, a medical director in a surgical intensive care unit, seen?  He’s seen doctors, nurses and technicians in operating rooms using their smartphones and computers to text their friends, check their emails, and bid on eBay while a surgery was in progress. “This phenomenon has set off an intensifying discussion at hospitals and medical schools about a problem perhaps best described as ‘distracted doctoring’,” writes Matt Richtel in the New York Times.  “My gut feeling is lives are in danger,” says another doctor who wrote a recent article about “electronic distraction” in a medical journal.

A few days after writing about electronic distraction in the operating room, Richtel turned his attention to the growing national debate over phone addiction in automobiles, a growing cause of death, maiming and mayhem on the road. At any give moment, a study discloses,  660,000 drivers are holding phones to their ears.

These are but a few symptoms of a troubling decline in the attention span of our populace. We have become a distracted society, and what should be of deep concern to parents and educators is the effect that this collective malaise is having on our children. If adults cannot handle their media addiction, why would anyone think that children can? There is evidence that they can’t.

One significant manifestation is the glorification of computer screens as an educational tool. Gloria Mark, a University of California professor who studies human-computer interaction, notes that “people are continually distracted when working with digital information. They switch simple activities an average of every three minutes (e.g. reading email or IM) and switch projects about every 10 and a half minutes. It’s just not possible to engage in deep thought about a topic when we’re switching so rapidly.” 

Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, points out that “No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain….My greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now, perhaps, videos (in the new vooks).

“The child’s imagination and children’s nascent sense of probity and introspection,” Professor Wolf writes, “are no match for a medium that creates a sense of urgency to get to the next piece of stimulating information. The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.“

“Techno-addiction is creating a generation of students with hypertrophied thumbs and atrophied intellects,” we wrote not long ago (Digital Distractions Producing a Generation of Morons?). The Times‘s Richtel has been hammering on this theme for  some time (in particular read his cogent article Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction) As our homes and schools become more and more committed to the romance the computer screen we need to pay attention to the warnings Richtel has been marshaling.

Can our addiction to media be cured? In a Sunday New York Times editorial, “The Joy of of Quiet“, Pico Iyer writes, “The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an ‘Internet sabbath’ every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation.”

Immersion into beauty, meaning and tranquility. It’s a start.

Richard Curtis

The Digital Revolution has created more paradoxes than a quantum physics think tank.  Silicon Valley parents sending their kids to schools that outlaw computers  (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  Elderly people who read faster on screens  than they do on paper (see Old People Do It Faster).  Children who don’t learn well on screens, except for autistic ones who thrive on iPads (See this video)   Students who prefer expensive paper textbooks to cheaper e-texts (see Surprise: Students Prefer Print Textbooks).

The New York Times’s Matt Richtel and Julie Bosman have produced yet another oddity: “Parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones…. .want their children to be surrounded by print books.

“Parents also say they like cuddling up with their child and a book,” the Times team writes, “and fear that a shiny gadget might get all the attention. Also, if little Joey is going to spit up, a book may be easier to clean than a tablet computer.

“’It’s intimacy, the intimacy of reading and touching the world,’” said a parent who reads books on his iphone but print books to his daughter. “’I know I’m a Luddite on this, but there’s something very personal about a book and not one of one thousand files on an iPad, something that’s connected and emotional, something I grew up with and that I want them to grow up with,’” said another.

For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper

Richard Curtis

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of reading on screens, especially among children. Some studies show they are too easily distracted by screens that tempt restless minds to to navigate away from schoolwork to emails, games and websites. (See High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools)

But for the elderly, e-reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPad actually accelerate reading speed. “German researchers found that elderly people read three times faster when using an iPad than a real book,” writes Nadia Gilani on Daily Mail Online. “The iPad’s screen was found to help them process the information on the page, even though the tablet’s LED screen has been criticized for hurting readers’ eyes if used over a long period of time.”

Tablets like the iPad were more effective than eInk devices like Kindle, the study revealed.  But when asked, the older crowd said they preferred printed books to gadgets.

Elderly people ‘read iPads three times faster than normal books’

Richard Curtis

Where was Lisa Lewis when I, a callow boy, sat in a park reading Dostoyevsky? How that brooding, cow-eyed youth longed for a girl to notice what he was reading! (see Can You Tell a Book Reader by the Cover?)

It would have been ideal, for Lewis, a freelance writer and playwright, nurtures the same kind of romantic notions that I once did. In her New York Times “Complaint Box” piece How E-Readers Destroyed My Love Life, she spins this fantasy: “I noticed his wavy hair, his feline eyes and his lips, which moved slightly as he read. But the first thing I noticed was his book: Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint,’ one of my favorites, was cradled in his palm. Between Delancey Street and Bryant Park on the uptown F train, I fell for him hard. It wasn’t the first time I’d flirted my way into a Saturday night date with a simple phrase: ‘I love that book.’”

Today Lewis and those of a similarly romantic inclination live in a dreary, coverless e-book world. Nooks and Kindles have struck a fatal blow to one of the most time-honored gambits for amorous men and women to break the conversational ice. “I had one good pickup line, and e-readers ruined it,” she laments.

Don’t despair, Lisa! There are still hot guys reading books. To find them, visit the Hot Guys Reading Books website. I hope you find that Philip Roth-loving guy with wavy hair and feline eyes. But you’ll look for me in vain: I don’t move my lips when I read.

Richard Curtis

The next time your wife complains that you never hear what she is saying to you, plead inattentional deafness. Tell her that it has been scientifically confirmed that your brain capacity cannot accommodate both visual and hearing senses at the same time. Cite the report in the Daily Mail that “Scientists demonstrated that when someone focuses their full attention on something, they can become deaf to normally audible sounds.” “Inattentional Deafness” is the formal name of the syndrome.

Your wife in all probability will have long ago reached a conclusion about the limits of your brain capacity and may commonly resort to getting your attention by whacking the carapace of your skull with a rolled up issue of Vogue. But now that your inattentiveness is grounded in the diligent investigations of neuroscientists you have a perfect excuse for not responding to her. You should therefore carry a book with you at all times and keep your nose buried in it, whether or not you are interested in it or indeed whether or not you are even literate, lest you be bereft of an excuse when you do not hear her addressing a question to you.

Inattentional deafness may have graver consequences than a lump on your pate, for it is also the reason why your visual acuity as a driver may be compromised by listening to the radio or an audiobook – or to that selfsame wife. So, for safety’s sake, you may have to choose between looking and listening.

You can read details of the experiment in Lost in a book? How reading and doing crosswords can block your ability to hear

No sexism is implied in this article. A variety of experiments, such as one published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, confirm that women are more attentive than men. These findings were reinforced by an informal survey undertaken by this blogger at Clancy’s in Times Square, where for some reason a preponderance of male patrons were immersed in books.  In response to being asked if they paid attention to their wives 85% of the respondents said “Huh?”  The same question was then posed to male non-readers. Only 65% responded “Huh?” (and 25% responded “What the hell business is it of yours?”) The remaining respondents concurred with the man who said he paid one hundred percent attention to his wife ten percent of the time.

Richard Curtis

For some time we’ve been wringing our hands about the potentially deleterious effect of e-books on children. Our concerns were provoked by studies that the distracting nature of screen devices have a negative impact on kids’ ability to concentrate and retain information.  And the jury is still out on e-textbooks.  (See Digital Distractions Producing a Nation of Morons?)

However, there’s some promising news that as a vehicle for pure pleasure-reading, e-books are becoming a big hit with children.  We have the New York Times‘s publishing-beat reporter Julie Bosman to thank for this ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy forecast.

In E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks Bosman quotes editors like Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books: “Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books, and now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.” And Jon Anderson, publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing: “Boy, a lot of kids got e-readers for Christmas…If it follows the same trend as adults, it’s the start of an upward curve.” And Matthew Shear, publisher of St. Martin’s Press: “The young adults and the teenagers are now the newest people who are beginning to experience e-readers.If they get hooked, it’s great stuff for the business.”

So, instead of asking sociologists and psychiatrists about the effects of e-books on young minds, maybe we should be asking…kids?

Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Techno-addiction is creating a generation of students with hypertrophied thumbs and  atrophied intellects. That seems to be the gist of Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction by Matt Richtel of the New York Times.  They may be dazzling multi-taskers but many cannot read, write, or calculate.

This comes as no surprise here, where we’ve posted a number of articles warning about the potentially destructive allure of screens (see below). But as the first fully wired crop of youngsters comes on stream the harmful impact of digital technology on academic performance is manifesting itself with a vengeance.

“The risk,” Richtel reports, “is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.”  He quotes Michael Rich, executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston: “Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing… The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently.”

The article focuses on a California student described as one of his school’s brightest. His digital skills and passion for videos earned him an A in film critique.  But he also got a D+ in English and an F in Algebra II, netting him a grade point average of 2.3. It took him two months to read 43 pages of an assigned book last summer. Nor has he gotten much exercise. The senior says “I haven’t done exercise since my sophomore year.” Books? He prefers YouTube, where “you can get a whole story in six minutes. A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.”  And just how well does he handle multitasking? In fact, even that’s a problem: “I’m doing Facebook, YouTube, having a conversation or two with a friend, listening to music at the same time. I’m doing a million things at once, like a lot of people my age. Sometimes I’ll say: I need to stop this and do my schoolwork, but I can’t.”

Another student, who exchanges 27,000 text messages every month (!!!), reflects the same inability to focus on task: “I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then 20 minutes later realize, ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework.’ ”

Researchers confirm what these stories tell us: “Several recent studies,” Richtel writes, “show that young people tend to use home computers for entertainment, not learning, and that this can hurt school performance, particularly in low-income families.”

A teacher puts it more plainly: “It’s a catastrophe.”

Read Matt Richtel’s Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction. And for additional background about the negative  impact of screen technology see Watching Books, The Medium is Screens. The Message is Distraction and More Evidence that Screens=Distraction.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Here’s a literary twist on the old tree-in-the-forest paradox: If you read a book but can’t remember a thing about it, did you truly read it?

Novelist James Collins not only read a book but remembers with crystal clarity the circumstances – the sun sparkling on the rippling water of the lake where he read the book so raptly. There’s just one problem: “I remember nothing about the book’s actual contents,” he tells us in his Sunday New York Times book review essay, The Plot Escapes Me.

So, you philosophers who are certain that that tree does or does not make a noise when no one is there to hear it fall – did Collins read his book or did he not? It would appear that he did not. If you can’t recall a thing about it, surely for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist and never did, yes?

So vexed by this question was Collins that he sought a psychologist for some answers. Not just any psychologist but Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

Dr. Wolf comforted him with these words: “I totally believe that you are a different person for having read that book…There is a difference,” she elaborated, “between immediate recall of facts and an ability to recall a gestalt of knowledge. We can’t retrieve the specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James’s, there is a wraith of memory. The information you get from a book is stored in networks. We have an extraordinary capacity for storage, and much more is there than you realize. It is in some way working on you even though you aren’t thinking about it.”

“Did this, Collins asks, “mean that it hadn’t been a waste of time to read all those books, even if I seemingly couldn’t remember what was in them?”

“It’s there,” said the psychologist. “You are the sum of it all.”

And let’s not forget that if he’s still skeptical about Dr. Wolf’s observations, he can go to his bookshelf and reacquaint himself with the book’s contents.

Richard Curtis

Do crime books make you a criminal?  And if so, do spiritual books make you a saint?

Both questions came up in two articles we came across on the same day.  The first, a New York Times piece by William Glaberson, Prison Books Bring Plot Twist to Cheshire Killings, described the trial of a man charged in a triple-homicide that took place after he and two other men broke into a home in Connecticut, a heinous butchery that drew comparisons to the one described in Truman Capote’s groundbreaking “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. In fact, the similarity was the point of the article.

It seems that the prosecutors had tried to enter into the official court record the names of books that one of the accused checked out of a prison library before the killings. The plots of those books were  “criminally malevolent in the extreme.” The defense wanted the list thrown out. Writes Glaberson: “The defense lawyers’ suggestion that prison library books could have shaped the crime, or that knowing Mr. Hayes read them could turn jurors against him, has created a strange kind of guessing game about the literary interests” of the accused.

Glaberson raises the question why a prison library would possess the kinds of books that might stimulate – or educate – a potential criminal and push him over the line between intellectual and perpetrator, between art for its own sake and art in the service of a murderer.

At this writing the titles have not been revealed, and as there is a huge First Amendment issue riding on the question, we hope all players in this drama will consider the implications.  We’ve seen this issue before in the form of efforts to use the Patriot Act to seize library records of suspected terrorists.  Here’s a report on that controversy by an attorney whose leanings are obvious and suggest how loaded the issue is.

Balance this story with this one reported by Anna Barker in The Guardian about a man who faced a 60-year prison sentence for drug offenses but who was instead granted probation and sentenced to read. Writes Barker: “With one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and the death penalty, the US state of Texas seems the last place to embrace a liberal-minded alternative to prison. But when Mitchell Rouse was convicted of two drug offenses in Houston, the former x-ray technician who faced a 60-year prison sentence – reduced to 30 years if he pleaded guilty – was instead put on probation and sentenced to read.”

In this case we’re allowed to know what he read. His reading list included To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bell Jar and Of Mice and Men.  “I particularly liked some of the ideas in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty,” says Rouse. As well he might, having tasted liberty’s sweetest gifts.

“Five years on,” Barker reports, “he is free from drugs, holding down a job as a building contractor, and reunited with his family. He describes being sentenced to a reading group as ‘a miracle’ and says the six-week reading course ‘changed the way I look at life.’”

Did books in the first story impel a man to kill?  Did they, in the second, impel a man to reform?  Can we the jury accept the first as true but reject the second as false, or vice-versa?  Some stimulating thought for jurists and philosophers.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times and The Guardian.