Evidently the “Digital Natives”, the generation that have grown up with the latest electronic conveniences, are not as sold on e-books as one might think. According to an article in the Washington Post, while they consume general content electronically, when it comes to reading for learning or leisure, they prefer printed books.
The article lists several reasons, but the one that resonates most strongly with me was this explanation:
“I can’t imagine reading Tocqueville or understanding him electronically,” Nordquist said in between classes while checking his e-mail. “That would just be awful.”
Without having read Baron’s book, he offered reasons for his print preference that squared with her findings. The most important one to him is “building a physical map in my mind of where things are.” Researchers say readers remember the location of information simply by page and text layout — that, say, the key piece of dialogue was on that page early in the book with that one long paragraph and a smudge on the corner. Researchers think this plays a key role in comprehension.
Another significant problem, especially for college students, is distraction. The lives of millennials are increasingly lived on screens. In her surveys, Baron writes that she found “jaw-dropping” results to the question of whether students were more likely to multitask in hard copy (1 percent) vs. reading on-screen (90 percent).
There are quirky, possibly lazy reasons many college students prefer print, too: They like renting textbooks that are already highlighted and have notes in the margins.
While Nordquist called this a crapshoot, Wallis Neff, a sophomore studying journalism, said she was delighted to get a psychology textbook last year that had been “run through the mill a few times.”
“It had a bunch of notes and things, explaining what this versus that was,” she said. “It was very useful.”
Shades of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”?
I can’t say I’ve given e-books a real try. When I took my MBA program the textbooks were electronic, but I convinced my employer, who was footing most of the bill, to let me print them out. I’ve read a few books that were only available electronically, and I found it a bit disorienting. There’s no real feeling of progress–the words just keep coming! And no, you can’t find your way back to a particular section quickly. But I’m an old fuddy-duddy who is so deeply engrained with the old “book” paradigm that I suppose I’m not a reliable critic. Nor are my D.N. children, as I’ve brainwashed them into believing in physical books. But I’m a bit surprised to find that the Digital Natives aren’t completely sold on e-books, either.
On the other hand, there are quite a few e-books being sold, so I find myself questioining this particular study. If it’s not the D.N.s, who is buying all those e-books? We need to see some real numbers. Is the purchase of e-books based on something else that cuts across demographic lines? It could be. One of my co-workers is an avid e-book reader, and he’s in his seventies. He has hearing difficulties, so audio books don’t work for him. And while I’m not an e-book reader, I am a regular audio-book consumer. But that’s to fill a specific need–make my commute more productive–and I still read more physical books in a year by nearly twice as many.
In any case, I’m not so sure the e-book revolution is over and that print has lost. I think it’s too early to tell. If this study is correct, it may well be that e-books will be the fad that fades away. I doubt it, as I do think e-books fill a specific consumer need that won’t go away. We may go on for quite some time with the needle stuck halfway. And I’m okay with that. I’m not ready to have print go away.
No, print is not dead. It IS panting, staggering and heart grabbing, but it isn’t dead.