The Effects of Digital and Skim Reading

Maryanne Wolf, writing for The Guardian:

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing - a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

Read this entire article—and don’t skim.

As I see more and more Christians carrying only the Bible on their phones, I’m especially concerned about how all this is impacting our ability to read Scripture well.



December 15, 2018