I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that my ability to read for long stretches of time has shortened. 
I’m now reading four books at once, partly because they are easily accessible on my Kindle and partly because I can't seem to focus on one for any length of time without getting distracted and moving onto the next one.
In fact, when I read at bedtime I find myself falling asleep after reading just a couple of pages. And, until I read the recent article in the Washington Post I believed that it was all due to being busy and perhaps older.
There is apparently another cause for all of the above symptoms.
Neuroscience researchers are discovering something pretty alarming.
“Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of 'Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.'
If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture.”
Here is an excerpt that describes where we’ve been and where we are now:
“Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said…
The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.
“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scrolling and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”
What will the consequences be? What about this next generation? Apparently reading wasn’t something our brains were designed to do originally, and because of this it may not take much time to unwire the reading ability:
“The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.”
I doubt and sincerely hope that reading does not become a de-evolving experience of human behavior.
I, personally, am going to reduce my internet scanning and I will do my best to read to my grandson every chance I get.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
