I recently entered into a Facebook conversation with a parent who had concerns about how reading comprehension may vary when readers read books and printed materials vs when readers read digital and online materials. I've done quite a bit of reading over the last three years on this subject, and I know what the vast majority of the research says: books beat digital. (Why "the last three years" you ask? The Shallows debuted in 2011. See below.) I have compiled a brief list of some the things that have been written on this topic over the years. To be fair, there is some research (but just a fraction of what exists to the contrary) that indicates books don't necessarily beat digital, but I have not included it here. Enjoy this list of sources supporting books and print over digital sources. If you read all of this and still remain unconvinced about the merits of print, well... perhaps it is because you have neither remembered nor comprehended what you read.
Reading: Paper vs Digital
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To date, all children are taught to read using non-digital reading material. As a consequence, they develop strategies for absorbing information in this paradigm. If a child was taught to read using exclusively digital material, she/he would develop different strategies. There is no physiological or neurological reason why comprehension (for example) would be better when reading print except that it is the prevailing paradigm. "It's not necessarily that e-books are bad for reading," Ms. Schugar said in an interview. "But teachers need more strategies for teaching kids to use what they know about reading in an e-book environment."
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