In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Maryanne Wolf sets off the alarm about the state of focused reading these days. Wolf is Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Spoiler alert: It’s not an upward trend.

From her piece:

“Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has conducted a series of studies which indicate that the “new norm” in reading is skimming, with word-spotting and browsing through the text….When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own.”

Also noted: “Cognitive scientist Tami Katzir from Haifa University, along with three other American researchers, has examined the effects of different information mediums, particularly on the young. Katzir’s research has found that the negative effects of screen reading can appear as early as fourth and fifth grade - with implications not only for comprehension, but also on the growth of empathy.”

Read the whole story here.

Illustration: Sebastien Thibault