Reading print texts improves comprehension more than reading digital materials does, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Valencia analyzed more than two dozen studies on reading comprehension published between 2000 and 2022, which assessed nearly 470,000 participants. Their findings suggest that print reading over a long period of time could boost comprehension skills by six to eight times more than digital reading does.
That is a stunning discovery but is the kind of thing that is routinely dismissed in this time because it runs so counter to the conventional norms where everything is “trending” otherwise, much like the remarkable social dismissal of the overwhelming evidence of the brain-mangling impact of football on its participants at all levels.
Our question is this: Who is going to stand against the destructive direction that the race to digital over print is taking us? On a whole array of levels, the race to authoritarian anti-democratic social and political norms seems almost unavoidable, and who will dare acknowledge the direct connection between practices that are diminishing development of social brain power needed to move our democratic culture ahead and this?
This week another sobering indicator was derived from the journalist Joshua Benton (no relation to our boss) of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University who noted that the trend in the awarding of Pulitzer Prizes in news reporting, as evidenced by the announcement of this year’s winners this week, has shifted dramatically away from print to online sources.
For the first time ever, he noted, online-native news sites produced more Pulitzer finalists than newspapers did, by 12 to 8. The list of this year’s winners highlighted, he wrote in an article this week, “the major ongoing shifts in American journalism: the best works of journalism are increasingly produced by just a few high-end institutions, the decline in local and regional newspapers has pushed online-native outlets to the forefront, and the work historically performed by newspapers is increasingly done by other forms of media.”
Just a decade ago, he noted, newspapers accounted for 24 Pulitzer Prize finalists compared to one online-only entity. As recently as 2022 it was still 17 newspapers to five online outlets. The shift has taken a longer time to materialize but is now showing up in a much more dramatic result.
So, taking into account the University of Valencia study in this context, what are we to make of this from the standpoint of the direction of our society? Maybe the bigger danger of TikTok is not the way an autocratic adversary may be mining personal information from us, as it is the way the site is promoting mindlessness and the diminishment of language skills.
What are we to make of the fact that even as the data proving the deadly impact of football on its players at all age levels is more decisive than ever, it comes just as the sport is now more popular in America than ever?