books vs technology research

Books vs Internet Research (What’s Better?)

We all do research on various topics several times a day, many times without even realizing we are doing it. Whether we’re searching for a new recipe or looking to find out how to do something, regardless of the complexity of the task, more often than not, we turn to the almighty Internet for answers rather than searching for them in specialty books. 

While this may seem to work just fine in many cases, what we usually don’t realise is that we’re actually missing out on a lot of information and make the active choice of speed over accuracy or complexity. 

Let’s take a closer look at this “books vs Internet” debate and find out which one is actually better for our research needs.

Which Is Better for Research, the Internet or Books?

Well isn’t this a question for the ages? And unfortunately, the answer is yet to be found. 

Even though many have tried to find a definitive answer, it all seems to come down to a series of factors: 

• The topic you’re researching
• How much time you have
• How in-depth you need your research to be 

Obviously, both reading books and Internet research have a series of benefits and disadvantages when compared to the other. Let’s have a closer look at these pros and cons.

Reading Books for Research –  Benefits and Disadvantages

• While the Internet has been around for decades, books have proven their value for centuries. So one of the first and most compelling arguments for reading books is that they have been used for hundreds of years as learning tools. Books have played a tremendous role in the development of civilization and have been used for learning by people who pushed the technology ahead time and time again. One would argue that if books were good enough to shape Nikola Tesla into the genius he was, they should be good enough for us. 
• Despite the unfathomable amount of information available on the Internet today , books tend to better cover the subjects you’re researching. 
• Books are timeless and convenient. You don’t need any device, battery or a connection in order to open a book and start learning about the topic you’re interested in.
• Books are easy on the eyes, which would allow you to spend a lot more time researching whatever you need to learn without any strain on the eyes.

Disadvantages

• It takes longer to do research using books than it does using the Internet
• Books don’t have a search function, so finding specific information using keywords is impossible
• The cost of using books for research can turn out to be quite high, depending on the topic
• Books are harder to carry around, so you might not always have access to them from anywhere

Using the Internet for Research – Benefits and Disadvantages

• The Internet gives you access to more resources than you could ever absorb in a lifetime on any topic
• The cost for Internet access nowadays is quite low and usually, there’s no limit to how much you are allowed to explore.
• Internet research is quick, easy and facile. It can be done from anywhere nowadays, as long as you have a device with an Internet connection and a full battery.
• You can’t trust everything you read on the Internet. We all learned that the hard way, especially in the past couple of years.
• The information is usually not structured as well as it is in books.
• The answers we find online to different questions usually only cover the subject superficially

That being said, the battle of Internet vs books ends up a draw in my opinion, at least when looking at the bigger picture. It all depends on the topic you’re researching and how well you need that subject to be covered in your research material. 

Why Are Books Better Than the Internet for Research?

Many times, despite the Internet being quicker, cheaper and sometimes more convenient, the winners of the books vs the Internet battle will be the books. Here’s why.

Let’s say you’re interested in learning a new skill. Maybe you’re thinking of a career change or you just want to explore a certain topic for different reasons. 

Maybe you want to start your own business or simply want to learn how to better run the business you already own. 

A simple Internet search for “how to be a better entrepreneur” could provide some answers. You will find tens, hundreds of articles on different websites with a couple thousands words each, a handful of bullet points and a “recipe for success”, guaranteed to help you achieve your goals. 

But that barely scratches the surface of what you should be learning in order to be a better entrepreneur. A book about management or leadership will contain hundreds of pages of valuable information, structured in an easily understandable manner and with a lot more context, which will help you better understand the topic than a couple of bullet points. 

These books have been written by industry leaders, experts in their field, people who have dedicated their lives to the topic you’re researching and have spent hundreds of hours trying to condense their lifetime of experience into a couple hundred pages for your benefit. 

Most articles you find online nowadays are written by professional content writers who research the topic you’re interested in for a couple of hours, read a couple of other materials for inspiration and spend another couple of hours actually writing the article that is supposed to make you turn your life around. 

Online articles are usually optimized for readability, for better loading times, and for better positions in the search results of your preferred search engine. 

There can’t even be a comparison between a book about leadership and an online search for “how to be a better leader”. How can it be? How can we compare a 200 pages book written by an expert to an online article written by a content writer who had a 3000 words limit for the article and had to follow strict optimization rules?

Can the Internet Replace Books?

That being said, one would tend to believe that books are the ultimate research tool and that the Internet can cover any subject only to a certain extent. That is not necessarily true though.

Again, the topic dictates the ideal research tool more than anything else. 

For example, if you’re looking to learn how to cook better or simply want to try out new recipes from time to time, the Internet is probably the only place you will ever need to look from now on. The amount of information about cooking available online renders most cookbooks rather useless nowadays, especially if we take into account that the information is available online in different formats, which also includes video.

Why would you read how to cook a dish when you can watch that dish being cooked and learn this way?

On the other hand, the Internet won’t be as effective as a learning tool if you want to learn a more complex activity such as trading. The more complicated the skill you want to learn or the task you want to accomplish, the better off you are doing your research from actual books rather than the Internet.

Then again, there are certain topics however that give you no choice, where research from books vs the Internet research is a battle that is lost by books before it even starts. 

I am referring to novelty subjects such as cryptocurrencies, digital marketing, app development. Since these topics are rather recent and became popular as books decreased in popularity, chances are you’re better off searching for information / tutorials online than in a library, simply because very few (or none) books have been written about them.

As you can see, and as I mentioned earlier, there is no definitive answer for this “reading books vs Internet” debate when it comes to doing research. The topic is the most important and decisive factor.

Why Are Textbooks Better Than the Internet?

When it comes to school learning though, despite the obvious benefits of also having access to the Internet, learning from books or textbooks is essential. Why?

First of all, because all textbooks are written by professionals, not by ghost writers or content writers. If you really want to learn about statistics for example, the better choice is, obviously, to use a textbook. It is written by a statistics professor who spent his life learning and teaching this subject. 

Another important aspect of textbooks and another reason why they are a much better learning tool in school is that they were structured in a specific way that allows you to better grasp the concepts and to understand and learn the subject. 

Their authors feed you information progressively, building your knowledge from the bottom up, in a manner and a rhythm that has been optimized over decades of experience teaching that specific subject. 

No online resource can replace that. The Internet can be a great supplement though. For those who want to learn more than what’s in the textbook, the Internet could be a good place to gather additional information. 

Do We Learn More on the Internet Than From Books?

Well, nobody really knows. Over the past decades, many things shifted towards the online environment, including education. Even though most of the school learning is still done with textbooks, the ratio of Internet vs books research tends to favor the former.

If we take into consideration how often we open up a browser to search for information and compare it with how often each of us opens a book to get that same information, it’s probably safe to assume that we do most of our learning online.

That is not necessarily a good thing though. As I mentioned, we can’t always believe everything we read on the Internet and we don’t always find correct or accurate information about the topic we’re interested in. Moreover, the information about any topic we find online barely scratches the surface of that particular subject when compared to a book.

Bottom Line

All in all, there shouldn’t really be a battle of books vs the Internet. We believe that the best results when it comes to research is combining the two rather than sticking to only one. Combining book reading with online research is bound to yield the best results. And considering how easy that becomes when you use a reading tracker app like Basmo , why wouldn’t you?

Getting the best of both worlds is incredibly easy. Basmo is an app available both on iOS and Android devices, designed for book lovers who want to take their hobby further. 

Basmo allows you to:

• Take notes while reading , which is especially useful whenever you read to learn rather than for pleasure. And since the app is already on your mobile device, combining the information you find online with what you find in the books becomes extremely easy.
• Scan book pages and save important information as notes or quotes, which again can make your life a lot easier when combining online research with book reading
• Create reading lists , which makes it a lot easier to line up all the books you want to read, in the order you want or have to read them
• Analyze your time spent reading , raising your awareness in regards to your reading habits and reading speed
• Set reading goals , a schedule and reminders , allowing you to become a more organized and efficient reader, regardless whether you do it for learning or for pleasure

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November 1, 2013

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The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens

E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but reading on paper still has its advantages

By Ferris Jabr

One of the most provocative viral YouTube videos in the past two years begins mundanely enough: a one-year-old girl plays with an iPad, sweeping her fingers across its touch screen and shuffling groups of icons. In following scenes, she appears to pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines as though they, too, are screens. Melodramatically, the video replays these gestures in close-up.

For the girl's father, the video— A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work —is evidence of a generational transition. In an accompanying description, he writes, “Magazines are now useless and impossible to understand, for digital natives”—that is, for people who have been interacting with digital technologies from a very early age, surrounded not only by paper books and magazines but also by smartphones, Kindles and iPads.

Whether or not his daughter truly expected the magazines to behave like an iPad, the video brings into focus a question that is relevant to far more than the youngest among us: How exactly does the technology we use to read change the way we read?

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Since at least the 1980s researchers in psychology, computer engineering, and library and information science have published more than 100 studies exploring differences in how people read on paper and on screens. Before 1992 most experiments concluded that people read stories and articles on screens more slowly and remember less about them. As the resolution of screens on all kinds of devices sharpened, however, a more mixed set of findings began to emerge. Recent surveys suggest that although most people still prefer paper—especially when they need to concentrate for a long time—attitudes are changing as tablets and e-reading technology improve and as reading digital texts for facts and fun becomes more common. In the U.S., e-books currently make up more than 20 percent of all books sold to the general public.

Despite all the increasingly user-friendly and popular technology, most studies published since the early 1990s confirm earlier conclusions: paper still has advantages over screens as a reading medium. Together laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicate that digital devices prevent people from efficiently navigating long texts, which may subtly inhibit reading comprehension. Compared with paper, screens may also drain more of our mental resources while we are reading and make it a little harder to remember what we read when we are done. Whether they realize it or not, people often approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper. And e-readers fail to re-create certain tactile experiences of reading on paper, the absence of which some find unsettling.

“There is physicality in reading,” says cognitive scientist Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University, “maybe even more than we want to think about as we lurch into digital reading—as we move forward perhaps with too little reflection. I would like to preserve the absolute best of older forms but know when to use the new.”

Textual Landscapes Understanding how reading on paper differs from reading on screens requires some explanation of how the human brain interprets written language. Although letters and words are symbols representing sounds and ideas, the brain also regards them as physical objects. As Wolf explains in her 2007 book Proust and the Squid , we are not born with brain circuits dedicated to reading, because we did not invent writing until relatively recently in our evolutionary history, around the fourth millennium b.c. So in childhood, the brain improvises a brand-new circuit for reading by weaving together various ribbons of neural tissue devoted to other abilities, such as speaking, motor coordination and vision.

Some of these repurposed brain regions specialize in object recognition: they help us instantly distinguish an apple from an orange, for example, based on their distinct features, yet classify both as fruit. Similarly, when we learn to read and write, we begin to recognize letters by their particular arrangements of lines, curves and hollow spaces—a tactile learning process that requires both our eyes and hands. In recent research by Karin James of Indiana University Bloomington, the reading circuits of five-year-old children crackled with activity when they practiced writing letters by hand but not when they typed letters on a keyboard. And when people read cursive writing or intricate characters such as Japanese kanji , the brain literally goes through the motions of writing, even if the hands are empty.

Beyond treating individual letters as physical objects, the human brain may also perceive a text in its entirety as a kind of physical landscape. When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text. The exact nature of such representations remains unclear, but some researchers think they are similar to the mental maps we create of terrain—such as mountains and trails—and of indoor physical spaces, such as apartments and offices. Both anecdotally and in published studies, people report that when trying to locate a particular passage in a book, they often remember where in the text it appeared. Much as we might recall that we passed the red farmhouse near the start of a hiking trail before we started climbing uphill through the forest, we remember that we read about Mr. Darcy rebuffing Elizabeth Bennett at a dance on the bottom left corner of the left-hand page in one of the earlier chapters of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice .

In most cases, paper books have more obvious topography than on-screen text. An open paper book presents a reader with two clearly defined domains—the left- and right-hand pages—and a total of eight corners with which to orient oneself. You can focus on a single page of a paper book without losing awareness of the whole text. You can even feel the thickness of the pages you have read in one hand and the pages you have yet to read in the other. Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on a trail—there is a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled. All these features not only make the text in a paper book easily navigable, they also make it easier to form a coherent mental map of that text.

In contrast, most digital devices interfere with intuitive navigation of a text and inhibit people from mapping the journey in their mind. A reader of digital text might scroll through a seamless stream of words, tap forward one page at a time or use the search function to immediately locate a particular phrase—but it is difficult to see any one passage in the context of the entire text. As an analogy, imagine if Google Maps allowed people to navigate street by individual street, as well as to teleport to any specific address, but prevented them from zooming out to see a neighborhood, state or country. Likewise, glancing at a progress bar gives a far more vague sense of place than feeling the weight of read and unread pages. And although e-readers and tablets replicate pagination, the displayed pages are ephemeral. Once read, those pages vanish. Instead of hiking the trail yourself, you watch the trees, rocks and moss pass by in flashes, with no tangible trace of what came before and no easy way to see what lies ahead.

“The implicit feel of where you are in a physical book turns out to be more important than we realized,” says Abigail J. Sellen of Microsoft Research Cambridge in England, who co-authored the 2001 book The Myth of the Paperless Office . “Only when you get an e-book do you start to miss it. I don't think e-book manufacturers have thought enough about how you might visualize where you are in a book.”

Exhaustive Reading At least a few studies suggest that screens sometimes impair comprehension precisely because they distort people's sense of place in a text. In a January 2013 study by Anne Mangen of the University of Stavanger in Norway and her colleagues, 72 10th grade students studied one narrative and one expository text. Half the students read on paper, and half read PDF files on computers. Afterward, students completed reading comprehension tests, during which they had access to the texts. Students who read the texts on computers performed a little worse, most likely because they had to scroll or click through the PDFs one section at a time, whereas students reading on paper held the entire texts in their hands and quickly switched between different pages. “The ease with which you can find out the beginning, end, and everything in between and the constant connection to your path, your progress in the text, might be some way of making it less taxing cognitively,” Mangen says. “You have more free capacity for comprehension.”

Other researchers agree that screen-based reading can dull comprehension because it is more mentally taxing and even physically tiring than reading on paper. E-ink reflects ambient light just like the ink on a paper book, but computer screens, smartphones and tablets shine light directly on people's faces. Today's LCDs are certainly gentler on eyes than their predecessor, cathode-ray tube (CRT) screens, but prolonged reading on glossy, self-illuminated screens can cause eyestrain, headaches and blurred vision. In an experiment by Erik Wästlund, then at Karlstad University in Sweden, people who took a reading comprehension test on a computer scored lower and reported higher levels of stress and tiredness than people who completed it on paper.

In a related set of Wästlund's experiments, 82 volunteers completed the same reading comprehension test on computers, either as a paginated document or as a continuous piece of text. Afterward, researchers assessed the students' attention and working memory—a collection of mental talents allowing people to temporarily store and manipulate information in their mind. Volunteers had to quickly close a series of pop-up windows, for example, or remember digits that flashed on a screen. Like many cognitive abilities, working memory is a finite resource that diminishes with exertion.

Although people in both groups performed equally well, those who had to scroll through the unbroken text did worse on the attention and working memory tests. Wästlund thinks that scrolling—which requires readers to consciously focus on both the text and how they are moving it—drains more mental resources than turning or clicking a page, which are simpler and more automatic gestures. The more attention is diverted to moving through a text, the less is available for understanding it. A 2004 study conducted at the University of Central Florida reached similar conclusions.

An emerging collection of studies emphasizes that in addition to screens possibly leeching more attention than paper, people do not always bring as much mental effort to screens in the first place. Based on a detailed 2005 survey of 113 people in northern California, Ziming Liu of San Jose State University concluded that those reading on screens take a lot of shortcuts—they spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for keywords compared with people reading on paper and are more likely to read a document once and only once.

When reading on screens, individuals seem less inclined to engage in what psychologists call metacognitive learning regulation—setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way. In a 2011 experiment at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, college students took multiple-choice exams about expository texts either on computers or on paper. Researchers limited half the volunteers to a meager seven minutes of study time; the other half could review the text for as long as they liked. When under pressure to read quickly, students using computers and paper performed equally well. When managing their own study time, however, volunteers using paper scored about 10 percentage points higher. Presumably, students using paper approached the exam with a more studious attitude than their screen-reading peers and more effectively directed their attention and working memory.

Even when studies find few differences in reading comprehension between screens and paper, screen readers may not remember a text as thoroughly in the long run. In a 2003 study Kate Garland, then at the University of Leicester in England, and her team asked 50 British college students to read documents from an introductory economics course either on a computer monitor or in a spiral-bound booklet. After 20 minutes of reading, Garland and her colleagues quizzed the students. Participants scored equally well regardless of the medium but differed in how they remembered the information.

Psychologists distinguish between remembering something—a relatively weak form of memory in which someone recalls a piece of information, along with contextual details, such as where and when one learned it—and knowing something: a stronger form of memory defined as certainty that something is true. While taking the quiz, Garland's volunteers marked both their answer and whether they “remembered” or “knew” the answer. Students who had read study material on a screen relied much more on remembering than on knowing, whereas students who read on paper depended equally on the two forms of memory. Garland and her colleagues think that students who read on paper learned the study material more thoroughly more quickly; they did not have to spend a lot of time searching their mind for information from the text—they often just knew the answers.

Perhaps any discrepancies in reading comprehension between paper and screens will shrink as people's attitudes continue to change. Maybe the star of A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work will grow up without the subtle bias against screens that seems to lurk among older generations. The latest research suggests, however, that substituting screens for paper at an early age has disadvantages that we should not write off so easily. A 2012 study at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York City recruited 32 pairs of parents and three- to six-year-old children. Kids remembered more details from stories they read on paper than ones they read in e-books enhanced with interactive animations, videos and games. These bells and whistles deflected attention away from the narrative toward the device itself. In a follow-up survey of 1,226 parents, the majority reported that they and their children prefer print books over e-books when reading together.

Nearly identical results followed two studies, described this past September in Mind, Brain, and Education , by Julia Parrish-Morris, now at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues. When reading paper books to their three- and five-year-old children, parents helpfully related the story to their child's life. But when reading a then popular electric console book with sound effects, parents frequently had to interrupt their usual “dialogic reading” to stop the child from fiddling with buttons and losing track of the narrative. Such distractions ultimately prevented the three-year-olds from understanding even the gist of the stories, but all the children followed the stories in paper books just fine.

Such preliminary research on early readers underscores a quality of paper that may be its greatest strength as a reading medium: its modesty. Admittedly, digital texts offer clear advantages in many different situations. When one is researching under deadline, the convenience of quickly accessing hundreds of keyword-searchable online documents vastly outweighs the benefits in comprehension and retention that come with dutifully locating and rifling through paper books one at a time in a library. And for people with poor vision, adjustable font size and the sharp contrast of an LCD screen are godsends. Yet paper, unlike screens, rarely calls attention to itself or shifts focus away from the text. Because of its simplicity, paper is “a still point, an anchor for the consciousness,” as William Powers writes in his 2006 essay “Hamlet's Blackberry: Why Paper Is Eternal.” People consistently report that when they really want to focus on a text, they read it on paper. In a 2011 survey of graduate students at National Taiwan University, the majority reported browsing a few paragraphs of an item online before printing out the whole text for more in-depth reading. And in a 2003 survey at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, nearly 80 percent of 687 students preferred to read text on paper rather than on a screen to “understand it with clarity.”

Beyond pragmatic considerations, the way we feel about a paper book or an e-reader—and the way it feels in our hands—also determines whether we buy a best-selling book in hardcover at a local bookstore or download it from Amazon. Surveys and consumer reports suggest that the sensory aspects of reading on paper matter to people more than one might assume: the feel of paper and ink; the option to smooth or fold a page with one's fingers; the distinctive sound a page makes when turned. So far digital texts have not satisfyingly replicated such sensations. Paper books also have an immediately discernible size, shape and weight. We might refer to a hardcover edition of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace as a “hefty tome” or to a paperback of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a “slim volume.” In contrast, although a digital text has a length that may be represented with a scroll or progress bar, it has no obvious shape or thickness. An e-reader always weighs the same, regardless of whether you are reading Marcel Proust's magnum opus or one of Ernest Hemingway's short stories. Some researchers have found that these discrepancies create enough so-called haptic dissonance to dissuade some people from using e-readers.

To amend this sensory incongruity, many designers have worked hard to make the e-reader or tablet experience as close to reading on paper as possible. E-ink resembles typical chemical ink, and the simple layout of the Kindle's screen looks remarkably like a page in a paper book. Likewise, Apple's iBooks app attempts to simulate somewhat realistic page turning. So far such gestures have been more aesthetic than pragmatic. E-books still prevent people from quickly scanning ahead on a whim or easily flipping to a previous chapter when a sentence surfaces a memory of something they read earlier.

Some digital innovators are not confining themselves to imitations of paper books. Instead they are evolving screen-based reading into something else entirely. Scrolling may not be the ideal way to navigate a text as long and dense as Herman Melville's Moby Dick , but the New York Times , the Washington Post , ESPN and other media outlets have created beautiful, highly visual articles that could not appear in print because they blend text with movies and embedded sound clips and depend entirely on scrolling to create a cinematic experience. Robin Sloan has pioneered the tap essay, which relies on physical interaction to set the pace and tone, unveiling new words, sentences and images only when someone taps a phone or a tablet's touch screen. And some writers are pairing up with computer programmers to produce ever more sophisticated interactive fiction and nonfiction in which one's choices determine what one reads, hears and sees next.

When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of unembellished text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But plain text is not the only way to read.

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for Scientific American . He has also written for the New York Times Magazine , the New Yorker and Outside .

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Books vs. screens: what does the latest research say, digital texts can be useful for teaching certain foundational skills, but they do not equally develop cognitive patience and slower, deeper processes in the brain that serve comprehension, retention and focus..

WHICH IS BEST FOR COMPREHENSION, SCREENS OR BOOKS?

Hooked on computer phonics, preserving deep reading.

The Case for Paper: Books vs. E-Readers

Why a good old-fashioned book is better for your mental health..

Posted February 2, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

• Research suggests that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books than e-readers.
• Physical books help readers absorb and recall content more effectively.
• Turning pages as we read creates an “index” in the brain, mapping what we read visually to a particular page.
• Research shows that, despite the prevalence of technology, most people still prefer print books to e-readers.

Screens are replacing paper when it comes to nearly every aspect of communication, but is it good for our mental health? Research proves the countless mental health benefits of reading , but still most people are choosing screen-time over picking up a book when it comes to entertainment.

Even in schools, gone are the days of buying those stretchy book covers for your heavy textbooks; digital modalities of learning are taking precedence, lightening backpacks but burdening young minds with the challenge of staying on-task in a sea of digital distractions. Reading short blurbs on social media as we scroll inhibits not only our attention span, making lengthy books more arduous for our dopamine -addicted brains to digest, but often waters down the language, using more informal, conversational-style writing that offers much less exposure to rich, brain-boosting vocabulary and concepts.

Research suggests that comprehension is six to eight times better with physical books than e-readers (Altamura, L., Vargas, C., & Salmerón, L., 2023). Though many people find they can read faster on a device, the distractions, like social media scrolling, advertisements, and email notifications, often hinder memory retention. Physical books provide an immersive experience, resulting in readers who absorb and recall the content more effectively.

Holding the weight of a book in your hand, turning the pages, and even highlighting your favorite passages are all experienced in the body. In fact, according to researchers, turning pages as we read creates an “index” in the brain, mapping what we read visually to a particular page, (Rothkopf, Ernst Z.,1971). This is part of what allows the brain to retain the information better when read from a physical book.

From the way you position your body when holding a book, to the way your head and eyes adjust to scan the pages as they turn, there are distinct differences in the way our bodies experience reading a good old-fashioned book. “Print books and the substrate of paper lend an obvious physicality to individual texts, while e-books are not tangible volumes and are differently touched, held, carried and navigated,” wrote Mangen, A., and van der Weel, A. in “The evolution of reading in the age of digitisation: an integrative framework for reading research,” (2016, p. 116–124). “The haptic feedback of a touch screen is different from a paper book, and the implications of such interactions warrant empirical investigations. Studies in experimental psychology and neuroscience show that object manipulation provides spatial information which is crucial for building coherent mental representations of the manipulated object.”

In addition to improving comprehension and providing an immersive, embodied experience, reading physical books offers a uniquely social experience that e-readers miss out on. Whether you’re perusing the shelves at the bookstore, coffee in hand, asking your local librarian for recommendations from their collection, or passing along your copy of a favorite book to a friend, interacting with fellow book lovers is one of the aspects of reading that people most enjoy. Downloading books onto your e-reader bypasses these opportunities for connection.

Perhaps what is most salient is the undeniably strong preference most people have for reading printed books. In one study, 92 percent of students reportedly preferred print books over e-books (Baron, N. S., 2015). There’s something special about holding a book in your hand, admiring the cover art, even appreciating the way your bookmark visually advances with time spent turning the pages.

Altamura, L., Vargas, C., & Salmerón, L. (2023). Do New Forms of Reading Pay Off? A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Leisure Digital Reading Habits and Text Comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231216463

Baron, N. S. (2015). Words onscreen: The fate of reading in a digital world. Oxford University Press.

Mangen, A., and van der Weel, A. (2016) The evolution of reading in the age of digitisation: an integrative framework for reading research. Literacy, 50: 116–124. doi: 10.1111/lit.12086 .

Rothkopf, Ernst Z. (1971) Incidental memory for location of information in text. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. Volume 10, Issue 6: Pages 608-613. ISSN 0022-5371, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(71)80066-X .

Heather Rose Artushin, LISW-CP, is a child and family therapist passionate about the power of reading.

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WCQR 2018: Computer Supported Qualitative Research pp 34–45 Cite as

What Is Better to Study: The Printed Book or the Digital Book?: An Exploratory Study of Qualitative Nature

• José Luís Carvalho   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6384-7821 17 ,
• Ricardo Luengo González   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4349-8606 17 ,
• Luis M. Casas García   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2752-1784 17 &
• Javier Cubero Juarez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1658-1041 18  
• Conference paper
• First Online: 27 September 2018

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 861))

Several years after the incorporation of digital in educational contexts, there is little systematic knowledge about the attitudes and practices of students with regard to reading in printed and digital books. This study aims to know what the students think of the Master “Research in Teaching and Learning of Experimental, Social and Mathematical Sciences”, of the University of Extremadura - Spain (2017–2018 academic year), about the study through printed books or digital books. The design of the research is descriptive and based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis (mixed-method) of the messages of an electronic Forum in which 31 students will participate. The content analysis of the messages of the Forum has been carried out following a process of reduction, organization, coding, obtaining results and determination of conclusions, using webQDA resource, software to support the qualitative analysis of data. The quantitative findings reveal that the largest of university students continues to prefer to study from printed books. The main justifications for this option refer to the importance of making annotations on an object with a life of its own and that reading on paper allows reaching higher levels of concentration and memory through the sensory experience that its use provides.

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This work was supported by the European Union and Gobierno de Extremadura under Grant FEDER: Programa Operativo FEDER de Extremadura.

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José Luís Carvalho, Ricardo Luengo González & Luis M. Casas García

Investigation Group Deprofe, Department of Didactics of Experimental Sciences and Mathematics, Faculty of Education, University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain

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Carvalho, J.L., González, R.L., Casas García, L.M., Juarez, J.C. (2019). What Is Better to Study: The Printed Book or the Digital Book?: An Exploratory Study of Qualitative Nature. In: Costa, A., Reis, L., Moreira, A. (eds) Computer Supported Qualitative Research. WCQR 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 861. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01406-3_4

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Technology vs Books: Which is Superior and Why?

Knowledge, a prerequisite to living a meaningful life, is available in both books and technology. Before we get to the discussion of technology vs books, let us first understand that both can be used as a means. The goal is to gain knowledge that can be put to use. Hence, technology and books are tools to achieve this end goal. People have their preferences, however. Some prefer technology that comes with a lot of conveniences, while others favor books that come with a unique vibe. But to draw a clear picture, let us first understand the importance of each and then move on to their comparison.

Table of Contents

Comparison Table of Tech vs Book

Significance of technology.

Declaring that technology has changed our lives would be an understatement. Technology has done much more than that. In fact, the technological era that we are living in has provided us with remarkable tools and enhanced our way of living.

Technology has influenced our lives so much that we can hardly contemplate how our lives would have turned out otherwise. It has made information easily accessible, thus empowering people to explore various topics and broaden their horizons.

To understand the influence of technology further, compare the traditional and modern times. Take businesses, for example. Those who implemented technology and went online are giving cut-throat competition in the market. Whereas, the businesses that were slow to adopt technology, or refuse to do so, are limited in scope. Incontestably, the differences are substantial, so much so that the results speak volumes.

Importance of books

The most popular point that people make in arguments about the superiority of paper books is the smell of old ones. Well, they are not wrong here, but there are more supporting points. Firstly, your books are not prone to leave you like technology when there are power outages.

Secondly, with books, there are physical interactions. This physical interactivity promotes deeper learning. Plus, you can feel your progress as you turn the pages towards the end. Lastly, books give a sense of ownership, which proffers personalization.

With books, you can find reference sources, so you can rest assured knowing the information is correct. This is an advantage of choosing books over technology, where the legitimacy of information can be trusted. This is unlike technology, where anyone can meddle with the information and lead people astray. Additionally, books improve imaginative and creative skills. These will eventually become essential in developing innovative solutions.

Books are pretty important, and there is evidence that backs up this claim. A scientific study by Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, Ph.D., and John S. Hutton, MD, clearly shows that 3- or 4-year-old kids who read a book with an adult exhibit more activation in the region of their brains responsible for linguistic abilities than when listening to an audiobook.

In another study , it was found that 8- to 12-year-olds have better brain connectivity when reading from a paper book instead of a screen. It only goes to show how much books matter in our developmental stages.

Why books are important

Apart from the reasons already mentioned, preserving books is vital. Here are some more points you should keep in mind –

• Knowledge Transfer: Books are a primary medium for transmitting knowledge, culture, and ideas from one generation to another. While technology can be destroyed easily, books may still be there even after a catastrophic event.
• Critical Thinking: They encourage critical thinking, analysis, and the development of intellectual skills.
• Language Skills: If you are a reader, it will enhance your vocabulary, grammar, and language comprehension.
• Stress Reduction: Reading can reduce stress by providing an escape from daily life. Also, they will help to do that without health issues such as eye strain.
• Entertainment: Books offer entertainment, escapism, and enjoyment through storytelling. Could be a great way to entertain yourself.
• Preservation of Culture: Books preserve cultural heritage and historical records.
• Education: Books are the fundamental tools for formal and informal education. Without books, it’s hard to run the current school system intact.
• Empathy: Reading diverse literature fosters empathy and understanding of different cultures and viewpoints.
• Research: They serve as invaluable sources for research and academic pursuits. While technology is relatively more capable, older journals and research are still preserved in hard copy.
• Reliability: Books often cannot undergo rigorous editing and can be easily fact-checked, making them reliable sources of information in comparison
• Physical Copies: Physical books do not rely on technology and are accessible even without electricity or devices. So, even if there is a blackout, they are good to go.
• Collectibles: Rare and collectible books hold historical and monetary value.
• Community Building: Books can foster communities through book clubs and discussions.
• Cognitive Benefits: Reading can improve cognitive function, memory, and concentration.
• Literary Art: They are a form of artistic expression and storytelling.
• Historical Significance: Many books have played pivotal roles in shaping societies and movements.

Technology vs books: What’s the difference?

After examining the importance of technology and books individually, let us explore their comparison by taking various factors into account.

Accessibility

Technology has improved the access to information strikingly. With a device and internet connection, you can have all the information at your fingertips. This is to say, it has made a plethora of resources available online. Moreover, the information can be accessed from anywhere at any time. eBooks are a great example of this.

Unlike books, you don’t have to worry about damaging devices while learning information on the go. Books are no doubt quite informational, but if you want to jump between topics, they are not a feasible option. You will end up referring to multiple books at a time.

Health concerns

Seeing kids with books the whole day doesn’t bother parents more than catching them with technology. Their concerns are understandable, as technology brings a lot of health problems. Prolonged use of technology leads to headaches, along with eye strain, back pain, neck pain, and so on.

Compare this with books, where even investing a few minutes a day can have positive impacts. This was found in a study that also stated reading books lowers blood pressure and heart rate. Besides, the activity also reduces feelings of distress.

Affordability

Technology is more affordable compared to books. Suppose you went through the back-cover summaries and finally decided on a book. If the book doesn’t meet your expectations halfway, you are left with no option but to get a new one. That will not only incur costs but also waste your time.

On the contrary, with technology, all you have to do is delete the current e-book and download others that interest you. Therefore, technology is more time-efficient and provides more flexibility compared to books.

Technology provides endless information and entertainment. That’s more like a curse in disguise. There are recommendations lined up to complete as soon as you are done ingesting current information. Too many options at a time create confusion and lead to distractions.

How often do you find yourself on web pages that you weren’t looking for, or going through happenings that you are least concerned about? This is a common problem in today’s technological world, which also happens to make people more anxious and stressed.

Contrariwise, we have books that take people to different realms through words. These words are written by those who are long gone but still have a significant impact on people’s lives. No doubt, technology allows you to read books too, but the distinction in reading experience is hard to overlook.

Reading via technology comes with lots of distractions in the form of notifications, diverting the reader’s attention. Books allow readers to fully immerse themselves in the topic or story, as well as live the lives of the various characters, so to speak. With technology, users are more likely to keep multitasking instead of enjoying the experience of reading.

Pros and Cons of Technology over Books

Although there is a constant debate about whether technology is a boon or a curse, when it comes to books, we have to admit there are certain advantages to technology that a book simply doesn’t have. On the other hand, there are things a book can do that technology can’t replicate.

Pros of Technology over Books

There are certainly things and areas where technology excels when compared to books. These are highlighted below:

1. Provides an enhanced interactive experience

First and foremost, technology excels at providing an immersive and interactive experience that a book simply can’t compete with. Technology is making strides daily, and with each passing day, it has more to offer.

Today, technology is not only interactive but also immersive. If wielded correctly, it can lead us into a glorious future. Books, while remarkable on their own, simply do not have this. Many even believe books to be mundane, if the education system is any indication.

2. Access to a literally unlimited amount of information

By using technology, one can access a treasure trove of information, all at once, in mere seconds. It is not only time-serving but also life-saving. Books are nowhere near this sort of convenience. Furthermore, books are typically constant in the kind of information that they provide, unlike technology, which can alter, add, edit, or remove information.

Take the internet, for example. If you want information on cats, it can literally present millions of web pages worth of data. A book, even an encyclopedia with several volumes, will find it very hard to match it.

3. Saves Paper

Technology is also fundamental when it comes to saving paper. Books are printed on paper that is produced after cutting down trees. Technology has allowed us to bypass this. Although we are not saying that technology is not a burden on nature, because it is, it is still integral when it comes to saving paper.

Cons of Technology over Books

Although the advantage of technology can be glaring at times, we should never forget that a coin has two sides, and as such, technology can be a humble servant but a cruel master. Keeping that in mind, here are a few disadvantages of the technology associated with books:

1. It can be too distracting

This one is obvious, since technology is all-encompassing, there is a lot that can distract one for good. At times, it has proven much more difficult for people to concentrate as there is a constant source of distraction on hand. The constant use of technology has also shortened our attention spans, which makes us easily lose focus.

2. Harsh on the Environment

It’s also true that, unlike books that are only a threat to trees, technological advancement can endanger entire ecosystems. It requires power, such as electricity, to work, which is generated using fossil fuels. Now, we do not have to address the effect carbon emission has on the environment, right? Furthermore, the e-waste generated due to old, discarded, or obsolete technological products is also an environmental threat we have to address.

3. Can lead to health issues

Technology and its products can lead to health issues such as backache, troubled eyesight, headaches, and even mental health issues such as depression or anxiety. While books also have small print, sufficient lighting can still help.

You can check our article on the pros and cons of technology to understand this better,

Reflecting on the books vs technology debate

One of the reasons people prefer technology to books is because they don’t have enough time or patience to sit through the process. Technology is a quicker way of getting information, whereas reading books is a slow process. But when it comes to retaining information, books have the upper hand. This happens because people tend to read fast on their screens, which makes it harder to retain information.

Now that we reached the end of this analysis, what are your thoughts on technology vs books? Would you prefer one over the other? If so, will that be worth it?

Op-Ed: When reading to learn, what works best for students — printed books or digital texts?

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As the pandemic drove a sudden, massive and necessary shift to online education last year, students were forced to access much of their school reading assignments digitally. Turning so heavily to screens for school reading was a temporary fix — and should remain that way.

A wealth of research comparing print and digital reading points to the same conclusion — print matters. For most students, print is the most effective way to learn and to retain that knowledge long-term.

When measuring reading comprehension, researchers typically ask people to read passages and then answer questions or write short essays. Regardless of the age of the students, reliably similar patterns occur.

When the text is longer than about 500 words, readers generally perform better on comprehension tests with print passages. The superiority of print especially shines through when experimenters go beyond questions having superficial answers to those whose responses require inferences , details about the text , or remembering when and where in a story an event took place.

Part of the explanation for discrepancies between print and digital test scores involves the physical properties of paper. We often use the place in the book (at the beginning, halfway through) or location on a page as a memory marker. But equally important is a reader’s mental perspective. People tend to put more effort into reading print than reading digitally.

Op-Ed: Distance learning? Even my students will tell you that’s not the future

Magic happens in a physical classroom, not through online platforms popularized during the coronavirus quarantine.

May 26, 2020

We can learn a lot about the importance of print by asking students themselves. Overwhelmingly, college students report they concentrate, learn or remember best with paper, according to my research and studies conducted by colleagues.

For instance, students say that when reading hard copy, “everything sinks in more” and can be pictured “more vividly.” When reading digitally, they admit they get distracted by things like online social media or YouTube.

However, not all students relish reading in print. Several of the more than 400 I surveyed commented that digital texts seemed shorter than the print versions (when they’re actually the same length) or declared that digital is more entertaining and print can be boring. They said things like digital screens “keep me awake” or “print can tire you out really fast” no matter how interesting the book.

Such attitudes support research that finds when students are allowed to choose how much time to spend reading a passage, many speed more quickly through the digital version — and do worse on the comprehension test.

Reading digitally only started becoming a norm about a decade ago, thanks to advancements in technology and consumer products such as e-readers and tablet computers. Meanwhile, another seismic shift was beginning to happen in education. Academic courses, and then whole degree programs, became available online at universities before such technology-driven offerings percolated down through the lower grades.

As academic e-books made their way onto the market, students and faculty alike saw these more affordable digital versions as a way to combat the high cost of print textbooks . Open educational resources — teaching and learning materials available free (almost always online) — also became another popular option.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan for all K-12 schools to transition from print to digital textbooks by 2017 . The rationale? Improve education, but also cost savings. The big three textbook publishers (Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) were quick to develop digital initiatives for K-12 materials. The pace accelerated in higher education as well, most recently with inclusive-access models , where publishers provide reduced-price digital texts to all course enrollees.

Regrettably, both the textbook industry and school decision-makers rushed to embrace digital reading platforms without assessing potential educational implications. Yet below the radar, teachers and students have often recognized the educational mismatch.

A recent survey by the research group Bay View Analytics found that 43% of college faculty believe students learn better with print materials — the same message students have been sending, when we bother to ask. Yes, cost issues need to be addressed, and yes, digital has a vital place in contemporary education. But so does print.

There’s a pressing need to rethink the balance between print and digital learning tools. When choosing educational materials, educators — and parents — have to consider many factors, including subject matter, cost, and convenience. However, it’s also important to remember that research findings usually tip the scales toward print as a more effective learning tool.

What can parents and educators do? For starters, explore students’ perceptions about which reading medium helps them concentrate and learn more easily. Conduct a short survey and discuss the results with students in class or at home. Make sure everyone who has a stake in students’ education — teachers, librarians, administrators and parents — thinks about the consequences of their choices.

The pandemic drove society to educational triage, not just by pivoting to digital materials but also by reducing curricular rigor . As schools continue to reopen and rethink their educational goals, research about learning should be used to help find the right balance between screens and print in the digital age.

Naomi S. Baron is professor emerita of linguistics at American University and author of “How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio.”

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Students learn better from books than screens, according to a new study

Limiting students to a purely digital world may not be helping all students to learn effectively. Image:  REUTERS/Michael Kooren

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Stay up to date:, youth perspectives.

Today’s students see themselves as digital natives , the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing influence of technology and have responded in kind. We’ve seen more investment in classroom technologies , with students now equipped with school-issued iPads and access to e-textbooks. In 2009 , California passed a law requiring that all college textbooks be available in electronic form by 2020; in 2011 , Florida lawmakers passed legislation requiring public schools to convert their textbooks to digital versions.

Given this trend, teachers, students, parents and policymakers might assume that students’ familiarity and preference for technology translates into better learning outcomes. But we’ve found that’s not necessarily true.

As researchers in learning and text comprehension, our recent work has focused on the differences between reading print and digital media. While new forms of classroom technology like digital textbooks are more accessible and portable, it would be wrong to assume that students will automatically be better served by digital reading simply because they prefer it.

Speed – at a cost

Our work has revealed a significant discrepancy. Students said they preferred and performed better when reading on screens. But their actual performance tended to suffer.

For example, from our review of research done since 1992 , we found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were more than a page in length. This appears to be related to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension. We were also surprised to learn that few researchers tested different levels of comprehension or documented reading time in their studies of printed and digital texts.

To explore these patterns further, we conducted three studies that explored college students’ ability to comprehend information on paper and from screens.

Students first rated their medium preferences. After reading two passages, one online and one in print, these students then completed three tasks: Describe the main idea of the texts, list key points covered in the readings and provide any other relevant content they could recall. When they were done, we asked them to judge their comprehension performance.

Across the studies, the texts differed in length, and we collected varying data (e.g., reading time). Nonetheless, some key findings emerged that shed new light on the differences between reading printed and digital content:

Students overwhelming preferred to read digitally.

Reading was significantly faster online than in print.

Students judged their comprehension as better online than in print.

Paradoxically, overall comprehension was better for print versus digital reading.

The medium didn’t matter for general questions (like understanding the main idea of the text).

But when it came to specific questions, comprehension was significantly better when participants read printed texts.

Placing print in perspective

From these findings, there are some lessons that can be conveyed to policymakers, teachers, parents and students about print’s place in an increasingly digital world.

1. Consider the purpose

We all read for many reasons. Sometimes we’re looking for an answer to a very specific question. Other times, we want to browse a newspaper for today’s headlines.

As we’re about to pick up an article or text in a printed or digital format, we should keep in mind why we’re reading. There’s likely to be a difference in which medium works best for which purpose.

In other words, there’s no “one medium fits all” approach.

2. Analyze the task

One of the most consistent findings from our research is that, for some tasks, medium doesn’t seem to matter. If all students are being asked to do is to understand and remember the big idea or gist of what they’re reading, there’s no benefit in selecting one medium over another .

But when the reading assignment demands more engagement or deeper comprehension, students may be better off reading print . Teachers could make students aware that their ability to comprehend the assignment may be influenced by the medium they choose. This awareness could lessen the discrepancy we witnessed in students’ judgments of their performance vis-à-vis how they actually performed.

3. Slow it down

In our third experiment, we were able to create meaningful profiles of college students based on the way they read and comprehended from printed and digital texts.

Among those profiles, we found a select group of undergraduates who actually comprehended better when they moved from print to digital. What distinguished this atypical group was that they actually read slower when the text was on the computer than when it was in a book. In other words, they didn’t take the ease of engaging with the digital text for granted. Using this select group as a model, students could possibly be taught or directed to fight the tendency to glide through online texts.

4. Something that can’t be measured

There may be economic and environmental reasons to go paperless. But there’s clearly something important that would be lost with print’s demise.

In our academic lives, we have books and articles that we regularly return to. The dog-eared pages of these treasured readings contain lines of text etched with questions or reflections. It’s difficult to imagine a similar level of engagement with a digital text. There should probably always be a place for print in students’ academic lives – no matter how technologically savvy they become.

Of course, we realize that the march toward online reading will continue unabated. And we don’t want to downplay the many conveniences of online texts, which include breadth and speed of access.

Rather, our goal is simply to remind today’s digital natives – and those who shape their educational experiences – that there are significant costs and consequences to discounting the printed word’s value for learning and academic development.

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Books Vs Internet Research (What’s Better?)

The internet has always been our go-to source for fast information. The internet provides information at the appropriate time, unlike books that'll require you to search thoroughly. The internet experience cannot be compared to reading books. Books are a slow process compared to the internet. You tend not to forget anything because you visualize ideas as you read.

Reading books and the internet has their different rewards. It is determined by the topic, the time frame you have to spend, and how deep the research is.

Reading Books for Research

Books are known as learning tools. Students in colleges must read books to support their research. The following are the advantages of reading books:

• Books cover the topic you intend to find on the internet. There is no subject area you're researching that books don't cater to.
• Books don't stress your eyes. You don't have to squint your eyes as you do on the internet. You can spend more time researching, and yet you won't get tired.
• Books are convenient. You can pick it up any day and anytime without worrying.

The disadvantages of books over the internet include:

• Books take a long time during the book research process.
• You might spend more using books. It all depends on the topic you're targeting.
• You might not be free to take books everywhere you go. Books are inconvenient.
• Research books are tasking. On the other hand, the internet is a fast means of doing research.

Reading the Internet for Research

• The internet is cheaper, and you have the opportunity to explore.
• The internet is faster. It only requires an internet connection .

The disadvantages of the internet over book research are

• Not everything on the internet is worthwhile. As a student, the internet has information that shouldn't be believed. There are usually different schools of thought.
• The information online is usually quick and not well-structured.

 The means to use for your research as a college student depends on how deep your research is.

Why is book research better than Internet Research ?

In a contest between books and the internet, books will always prevail. Although it may be quicker and less expensive, the internet also has the potential to lead people astray. For instance, if you search for "how to start a company idea," the results on the internet will vary. There will be a variety of information in the search results from various blogs. However, they won't go into great detail about what you want to understand.

Experts write books in the field you're trying to learn from. Professionals with a wealth of knowledge write them. All information in books is of great value and is carefully written.

Professional content writers usually write information on the internet. They spend time doing research and coming up with content. Online content is optimized for readability. The contents might not be information-rich.

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The Impact of E-Book Reading on Young Children’s Emergent Literacy Skills: An Analytical Review

Associated data.

Data available on request from the corresponding author.

Young children’s use of digital devices is increasing as we progress through the 21st century and handheld and mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have become increasingly available. While older children using tablets to read has been more broadly investigated, less is known about the impacts of digital reading on children at the stage of literacy acquisition. An analytical review was conducted on the effects of interactive e-book interventions for young children’s literacy development when compared to (a) listening to print books, (b) regular school programs, and (c) reading non-enhanced and non-interactive e-books. A significant additional beneficial effect of e-book interventions was found for phonological awareness and vocabulary learning based on data from 1138 children in 14 randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies. When e-books are properly selected and used, children develop literacy skills equally well and sometimes better than with print books. Additionally, e-book interventions outperformed the regular school program in the development of literacy skills. Similarly, enhanced e-book conditions revealed benefits over the non-enhanced e-book interventions in literacy skill acquisition. The impact of these findings related to health issues, e-book design, disadvantaged populations, and adult-led e-book sharing is discussed.

1. Introduction

Children are growing up in a digital media environment where interactions with digital media are an increasing part of children’s daily lives in classrooms and at home. More children, across all levels of society, are using interactive and mobile media on a daily basis [ 1 ]. In a recent survey of parents of children aged 8 years and under, the majority (98%) reported that they live in a home with some type of mobile device [ 2 ]. As a result of this exposure to technology, children today have many opportunities to explore digital devices and play with them. Many activities in children’s lives are digital, including early literacy experiences. Children’s books are increasingly available in a digital format on electronic devices—often handheld and mobile [ 3 ].

E-books present interactive multimodal information as written text, oral reading, music, illustrations, animations, and hotspots that are activated by touching or pressing the touch screen to generate sound and animation (see an example of the e-book “A Shiver of Sharks”: http://bit.ly/2nM3Gr8 ) (accessed on 15 April 2021) [ 4 ]. With digitization, new opportunities for the mediation of multimodal text have emerged. Among the potential advantages of e-books is that they are easily accessible and interactive for beginning readers who cannot yet decode text or are just beginning to learn to decode. Even children with emergent literacy skills who cannot yet read can explore e-books by themselves without the help of an adult [ 5 ]. This invites reading practices that may differ from traditional book reading, due to the affordances of the digital touch screen and the social settings in which it is used [ 6 ].

However, questions regarding young children engaging with e-books arise regarding whether these digital stories are as beneficial for children as print books read by an adult. There has been much hope for the educational potential of interactive media, such as e-books, along with fear about their overuse during early childhood, a period of rapid brain development. We are only beginning to understand what this digital shift means for young children’s early literacy development [ 3 ]. The following questions are still unresolved: What do e-books bring to a child’s early literacy experience? Additionally, what are the digital reading potentials for improving and enriching the literacy environment of a young child?

1.1. Effects of Digital Reading on Children’s Literacy Skills

In the last decade, five reviews [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] and four meta-analyses [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] have been carried out to compare children’s reading acquisition ability when using digital devices versus the use of traditional printed books [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].

Two of these reviews [ 8 , 9 ] concluded that e-books and printed books play different roles in learning to read and, therefore, the false dichotomy between these two forms of reading should be eliminated, because they are different experiences of reading. A review investigating the role of digital reading [ 9 ] found that tablets may improve emergent literacy skills. However, parent or teacher scaffolding is needed to maximize the benefits of e-books. A different review [ 10 ] reported that well-designed e-books are as effective as printed books in improving reading acquisition outcomes. A meta-analysis on multimedia stories, which compared independent e-book reading with traditional shared book reading, found that multimedia features can provide similar scaffolding to reading with an adult [ 12 ]. A different meta-analysis [ 13 ] found that stories presented through multimedia can support and even strengthen children’s understanding of the story compared to listening to stories in more traditional settings, such as storybook reading. Similarly, a research synthesis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies investigating the effects of e-books on children’s literacy development found moderate effects of e-books on reading comprehension [ 14 ]. However, a recently published meta-analysis examining the effects of e-book use on literacy outcomes found no statistically significant effects between e-book and non-e-book conditions on norm-referenced standardized test measures of reading and reading comprehension [ 15 ].

Despite the positive outcomes of e-book reading, a number of researchers have taken a more critical view on e-books due to their incorporation of features such as hotspots that contain animation, sound, and other multimedia effects and may distract young readers from the story content and negatively affect their understandings of the story’s main theme [ 10 , 11 , 13 , 14 ]. Some hotspots are congruent with the story (i.e., support the story’s content) and others are incongruent (i.e., they do not align with the story content and might even distract the reader from it) [ 4 ]. In this sense, a recent analysis on e-book design reveals that the first published digital books included hotspots that often had little or no relevance to the story and distracted children from language and literacy learning. Nevertheless, important improvements have been made in e-book design compared to former years as the number of interactive visuals and of hotspots seem much lower than in previous years, and they are more congruent; that is, they elaborate or extend the story line, as it is advisable [ 16 ].

Another finding of the literature on e-book reading is that adult–child interaction and e-book sharing with young children differs from sharing print books [ 8 , 10 , 11 ]. Parents reported their children not only read traditional books more than electronic books, but enjoyed them more and paid more attention to them. Caregivers also reported participating in more talk about the story when reading print books than electronic books [ 17 ]. Similarly, teachers sharing an enhanced digital book struggle to define their role [ 6 ]. When sharing a digital book, children may be occupied by the interactive elements in the book (tapping hotspots initiates sounds, simple animations, and dialogue/sounds from the characters) while ignoring the story. More research is needed to further explore new routines that develop when families or educators have access to a set of well-designed digital picture books.

Despite these concerns, previous empirical studies have identified the effects that e-books can have on the development of children’s literacy skills. Due to their many unique features, e-books provide children with many opportunities for promoting their emergent literacy skills. For instance, studies have shown that digital books support the development of children’s print and phonological awareness [ 18 , 19 , 20 ], vocabulary development [ 18 , 21 , 22 ], spelling development [ 23 ], and reading comprehension [ 5 , 24 ]. These skills (e.g., phonological awareness, print awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension) are considered significant to the development of children’s emergent literacy abilities.

1.2. Health and Developmental Concerns

Heavy media use during preschool years is associated with negative effects on children’s health, general development, and outdoor play [ 1 ]. The risks of children spending a lot of time in front of a screen have been well documented by research: Addiction [ 25 ], obesity [ 26 ], negative effects on motor dexterity [ 27 ], and eye fatigue [ 28 ], among others.

Moreover, since the cognitive control mechanisms are still immature in young children [ 29 ] the high exposure to digital games (also found in e-books) makes them especially vulnerable to develop pathological gaming behavior [ 30 ]. Pathological gaming has become a major concern for health care professionals during the last years [ 31 ] and has been included as a game disorder in the International Classification of Disease (ICD-11) Manual [ 32 ], as well as, a condition called Internet Gaming disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) [ 33 ]. Thus, evidence is sufficient to recommend time limitations on digital media use for children 2 to 5 years to no more than 1 h per day [ 34 ].

It is reasonable for parents and teachers to be concerned about the excessive use of digital content, especially in young children. However, touch screen devices are rapidly gaining place in the lives of families with young children, and parents also hold positive views toward technology use and are able to identify a range of benefits that their children have acquired [ 1 , 2 ]. Today, media represent just another environment; children do the same things they have always done, only virtually.

A different issue related to health that has changed education dramatically and globally, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, has been the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering these two scenarios, young children growing up in contexts saturated with technology and the shift away from the classroom and the adoption of online and digital learning in many parts of the world, policies and recommendations must evolve and provide thoughtful, practical advice to parents and teachers founded on evidence, and not based merely on the precautionary principle [ 35 ].

1.3. The Present Study

The current review is an attempt to better understand the effects of e-book use on reading outcomes for children aged 7 years or younger. This specific age group was chosen based on previous research findings, suggesting that book reading in the first 6 years of life is related to emergent reading and reading achievement [ 36 ].

Previous reviews [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] and meta-analyses [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] have broken ground into furthering our understanding of how e-books can enhance literacy skills and practice. However, none of these reviews have been conducted for investigating the effects of e-book use on the reading outcomes of preschool, kindergarten, and first grade students in the last 10 years. There is a lack of knowledge concerning digital reading with regard to the extent to which e-book interventions support different aspects of a student’s emergent literacy acquisition and to which enhanced features within e-books improve literacy outcomes. There is a pressing tension between the actions that could be taken and the actions that should be taken with e-books [ 14 ].

Given these gaps in our understanding of the extent to which e-books support early emergent reading skills, this study is dedicated to e-book-based interventions for the acquisition of literacy skills of children from 4 to 7 years old, including studies from 2010 to 2020. We consider an e-book as any form of electronic text that contains key features of print books. This synthesis includes both traditional e-books (static digital version of a print book) and enhanced e-books (with the key features of a traditional print book, but with animated and interactive content, audio, and video). This definition of an e-book excludes other software that can support literacy development, but is not embedded in a book format.

The aims of this paper are to (a) explore how effective e-books are for supporting early literacy skills: Concepts about print, phonological awareness, and vocabulary as well as reading comprehension; (b) examine the effects of e-book reading interventions compared to printed book reading; (c) study the results of enhanced e-book reading interventions compared to non-enhanced e-book reading interventions or simple static e-books; (d) study the effects of e-book reading interventions compared to the regular school program; and (e) analyze the reviewed studies from adult support, e-book design, and disadvantaged populations. We were specifically interested in the additional effect on literacy development of interactive or enhanced e-book interventions as compared to the more traditional presentation of stories, such as reading a print story book, following the regular literacy curriculum, or reading a more traditional e-book without enhanced characteristics.

The present analytical review used more stringent inclusion criteria than previous reviews and meta-analyses, only including randomized controlled trial studies (RCTs) that have a control group and a pre- and post-intervention design, including baseline measures. Meta-analytic techniques to control for the effects of statistical dependence on effect sizes were used. However, due to the scarce number of RCTs on this topic and the differences in methodologies and excess of variables involved in the reviewed papers, it was decided to exclude meta-analysis procedures. However, the present study could be used as a precursor to a meta-analysis.

A total of 14 studies met the inclusion criteria, and throughout these studies, nine conditions compared e-books to print books, ten conditions compared enhanced e-books to non-enhanced e-books, and seven conditions compared e-books to the regular literacy curriculum.

2. Materials and Methods

In order to conduct the present review, we have followed the methodological approach to systematic reviews by Hammersley [ 37 ] where exhaustive searching for relevant material, transparent methodological assessment of studies, and a formal and explicit method for the synthesis of findings, have to be explicitly established.

2.1. Data Collection

The following criteria were used to assess the eligibility of the studies:

• A randomized controlled trial (RCT) design and matching procedures to ensure equivalence at baseline for treatment and comparison groups were used. These features of study design are critical to establishing the internal validity of study findings [ 38 ];
• The study contained a targeted e-book reading intervention. This included interventions that used e-book reading to target specific literacy skills; it also included interventions with kindergarten, preschool, and first grade age children; interventions delivered by researchers, teachers, or parents; and interventions delivered on a one-to-one basis or to children in groups;
• The study measures’ dependent variables that focused on literacy outcomes (e.g., concepts about print, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension);
• The study contained at least one literacy outcome measure that yielded an objective quantitative score. These outcome measures included mainly scores on author-designed assessments, such as testing children’s knowledge of the vocabulary to which they had been exposed in the course of intervention;
• The study contained at least one control group or different treatment conditions. This included studies with passive or “business as usual” control groups and studies with active control groups, including control groups exposed to print book reading and to non-enhanced conditions of e-book reading;
• The participants in the study were children aged 7 years or younger, regardless of language, country income level, race, or other sociodemographic indicators;
• Sufficient empirical information to calculate effect sizes was provided.

We searched for relevant published articles from January 2010 to January 2021. Literature searches were conducted in 9 databases: ERIC, Education Database, Psychology Database, Google Scholar database, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Medline, PubMed, and Social Science Database. Search terms included the following: electronic book, digital book, e-book, multimedia book and literacy, reading, reading comprehension, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and random controlled trial. Combinations of these terms were used to search for the targeted articles.

The initial search yielded 2746 studies. After importing abstracts using Mendeley and removing duplicates, 1978 studies remained; after reviewing the abstracts, 106 studies were selected as possible studies to be included. Next, authors conducted a full-text review of the 106 remaining articles, resulting in a final sample of 14 studies that met the inclusion criteria. A PRISMA flowchart is shown in Figure 1 [ 39 ].

Prisma chart describing the search and inclusion procedures [ 39 ].

2.2. Coding Procedures

The characteristics of the 14 reviewed studies are presented in Table 1 , Table 2 and Table 3 . Table 1 presents the conditions comparing exposure to e-books and printed books; Table 2 shows comparisons between different types and conditions of e-books; and Table 3 shows comparison between exposure to e-books and to the regular school program. The studies were coded by the three authors of the present study; 94% interrater agreement was achieved, and discrepancies in coding were resolved via discussion. We included general codes of the studies (e.g., author, study design, and participant information), as well as specific codes for e-book use (e.g., intervention description and device used to access the e-book, number and type of e-books, intervention duration, etc.).

Study information (e-book versus print book).

Note. TC = treatment vs. condition; MT = multi-treatment groups; ST = single treatment group. T1 = treatment 1; T2 = treatment 2; T3 = treatment 3; T4 = treatment 4; C1 = control 1; SES = socioeconomic status; CP = Concepts about Print; PA = Phonological Awareness; EV = Expressive Vocabulary; RV = Receptive Vocabulary; RC = Reading Comprehension. 1 Condition 2 (T1) and (T3) of this study are reported in Table 3 . 2 Condition 5 (T1) and (T3) of this study are reported in Table 2 .

Study information (enhanced e-books versus non-enhanced e-books).

Note. TC = treatment vs. condition; MT = multi-treatment groups; ST = single treatment group. T1 = treatment 1; T2 = treatment 2; T3 = treatment 3; T4 = treatment 4; C1 = control 1; SES = socioeconomic status; CP = Concepts about Print; PA = Phonological Awareness; EV = Expressive Vocabulary; RV = Receptive Vocabulary; RC = Reading Comprehension. PPVT = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; 1 Condition 3 (T1) and (T3) of this study are reported in Table 3 . 2 Condition 3 of this study is reported in Table 3 (T3) and (T4). 3 Other conditions of this study presented in Table 1 .

Study information (e-book versus the regular school program).

Note. TC = treatment vs. condition; MT = multi-treatment groups; T1 = treatment 1; T2 = treatment 2; T3 = treatment 3; T4 = treatment 4; C1 = control 1; SES = socioeconomic status; CP = Concepts about Print; PA = Phonological Awareness; EV = Expressive Vocabulary; RV = Receptive Vocabulary; RC = Reading Comprehension. PPVT = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; 1 Other conditions of this study reported in Table 1 . 2 Other conditions of this study reported in Table 2 . 3 Other conditions of this study reported in Table 2 .

2.3. Calculation of Effect Sizes (ES)

All 14 studies included in this review provided adequate statistical information (e.g., the pre- and post-intervention control and treatment group means, standard deviations, and numbers of participants in each group) that made it possible to calculate the effect sizes for the differences among different intervention, control, or treatment groups on literacy outcomes (e.g., concepts about print, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension). We applied the effect size formula based on the mean pre–post change in the treatment group minus the mean pre–post change in the control group (or a different treatment condition), divided by the pooled pretest standard deviation [ 40 ]. In order to reduce the bias estimation of effect sizes, a bias correction parameter, which considered the sample size of the two groups, was also applied, as recommended in [ 52 ]. This formula was chosen because (a) it is recommended for studies with repeated measurements in both the treatment and control groups, as is the case of the present study and (b) in terms of bias, precision, and robustness to heterogeneity of variance, it is favored over alternate effect size estimates [ 46 ]. Based on recommendations, estimates of less than 0.20 were considered non-significant; estimates of 0.20–0.49 were considered small effects; 0.50–0.79, medium effects; and values above 0.80, large effects [ 53 ].

Overall, 14 studies met the inclusion criteria. A total of 11 studies were conducted in the last five years (i.e., 2014–2018). The remaining were published between 2011 and 2013. Studies were classified based on (1) e-books versus printed books ( Table 1 and Table 2 ), enhanced e-book versus non-enhanced e-book (i.e., interactive versus static e-books), ( Table 2 ), and (2) e-book versus the regular school program ( Table 3 ). Some of the selected studies contributed to more than one of these categories. The reading outcomes were classified into four variables: Concepts about print, phonological awareness (including measures of letter sound and letter name), vocabulary (including measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary, as well as other related measures of vocabulary, such as new words in story retelling, sentence completion, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT [ 49 ]), and reading comprehension. The 14 studies included in the review contributed more than one effect size as a result of using multiple outcome measures or comparing more than one pair of conditions (i.e., multiple treatments and/or multiple comparison groups), resulting in a total of 60 effect sizes for the analysis. Of the 60 outcomes, 5 were on concepts about print, 13 were on phonological awareness, 39 on vocabulary, and 3 on reading comprehension (see Figure 1 ).

Four of the reviewed studies reported atypically large ES [ 20 , 21 , 48 , 51 ] if we compare them with the rest of the reviewed studies or previous research [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Ioannidis [ 54 ] points out that a single study cannot be seen in isolation and should be compared with the entire prior evidence on the same or similar questions. Another reason of atypically large ES, pointed by Ionnidis [ 54 ] could be a paradigm shift. In this regard, it is important to note that in the present review, most of the studies reporting large ES are in the “e-book vs. regular school program condition”. It could be inferred that children learning vocabulary with e-book interventions learn much more specific words than those not receiving any intervention at all. However, due to both random errors and biases, too large effect sizes require extra caution [ 54 ].

3.1. Participant Characteristics

In the 14 studies selected, a total of 1138 students were included with a mean age 63,92 months (with a mean age range between 52 and 82.2 months of age)—492 preschoolers, 507 kindergartens, and 139 first graders. The studies included 451 girls, 501 boys, and 186 students whose gender was not reported.

Across the studies, four papers [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 47 ] reported a total of 330 students at risk for learning disabilities. A total of 24 students who were English Language Learners (ELLs) were reported in one paper [ 42 ], and the number of low-SES children reported in one paper was 78 [ 51 ].

All selected studies were published in English, but conducted in different languages and countries: Six in Israel [ 19 , 20 , 24 , 41 , 47 , 51 ]; three in the US [ 42 , 44 , 45 ]); two in The Netherlands [ 48 , 50 ]; one in Canada [ 43 ]; one in South Africa [ 21 ]; and one in Taiwan [ 46 ].

3.2. Intervention Materials

The story books selected for the studies were both commercial e-books and e-books adapted by the researcher. In most cases, when authors selected a commercial e-book, their choice was based on a set of criteria, such as kindergarten teacher recommendations [ 41 ]; the inclusion of colorful pictures and a basic storyline appropriate for preschool and kindergarten children [ 42 ]; a good narrative structure and readability that provided descriptions of characters, settings, times, goals/initiating events, problems, and solutions/endings [ 24 , 44 ]; high-quality illustrations; ease of interaction (e.g., hot spots that were clearly identified); and interactive elements that did not interfere with the story text [ 39 ].

Specially constructed electronic versions were adapted by researchers to fit or create a story adequate to the cultural context [ 21 ] and to capture educational principles, especially those supporting literacy development. In some cases, children were offered a number of interactive modes of operation (i.e., read only, read story with dictionary, and read the story and play) [ 20 ] and different versions (i.e., with metacognitive guidance and the other without such guidance) [ 47 ]. Among the salient characteristics of some of the selected e-books was the “read story with dictionary”, a mode embedded in the e-book, which offers an oral reading of the text together with explanations of difficult words. To support individualized vocabulary acquisition, young readers could click the hotspots and access the respective screens as often as they wished. Each difficult word was enunciated clearly by the narrator as it appeared on the screen and was associated with pictures that support its meaning [ 20 , 47 , 51 ].

3.3. Literacy Measures

In the reviewed studies, reading knowledge was mainly assessed using measures, created by the researcher, of target text, words, or sounds instructed or included in the e-books selected for the respective studies. In many of the studies, the tasks were based on existing tests (i.e., adjusted for the research, such as a created picture vocabulary test, a frequently used test format for young children’s vocabulary learning) [ 24 , 41 , 44 , 45 , 46 ].

Measures created by the researcher, as opposed to norm-referenced standardized tests, are likely to be sensitive to growth in specific vocabulary [ 55 ]. As such, these measures are dependent on e-book text and should have greater outcomes than independent non-related e-book text measures. Additionally, interventions in the selected studies were not of a sufficient time duration to lead to changes in norm-referenced standardized tests or non-dependent measures of an e-book text.

The frequency of non-significant, small, medium, and large ES would be reported in each of the three studied conditions and on each literacy measure (see Figure 2 for a summary of the frequency of different ES in vocabulary and phonological awareness in the e-book and control conditions).

Summary of the frequencies of ES (effect size) in vocabulary and phonological awareness in the e-book and control conditions.

3.4. E-Book versus Print Book

Five studies compared e-books to print book in nine different conditions with a total of 17 reported outcomes (see Table 1 ). Two of the outcomes were on concepts about print, one with no significant effect and the other with a large effect of ES = 3.35 in favor of the e-book. Six of these outcomes were on phonological awareness with effects ranging from non-significant to small effect sizes (0.08 to 0.49) in favor of e-book use. Studies reported eight additional outcomes on vocabulary, one of them with negligible effects on students’ vocabulary, two of them with small-to-large effects (0.30 and 0.91) in favor of the print book use; in these two cases, the print book was read, and activities were guided by an adult, while the e-book condition was operated independently by the children. However, the other five outcomes on vocabulary in favor of the e-book use ranged from medium-to-large effect sizes (0.65 to 1.57). The conditions that favored the learning of vocabulary using the e-book versus the printed book used an enhanced e-book condition with vocabulary instructions versus listening to an adult-read print story with incidental vocabulary exposure [ 42 ] or using an e-book with scaffolding-like questions versus the experimenter reading aloud the print story one-on-one without receiving practice of the story [ 44 ]. In one of the conditions, the e-book was used only in the “read to me” mode versus the print book read by the experimenter without receiving any other practice; the outcomes favored the e-book [ 44 ]. Studies reported one outcome on reading comprehension in favor of the print book with a medium effect size, ES = 0.58.

3.5. Enhanced E-Book versus Non-Enhanced E-Book Conditions

Seven studies compared enhanced e-books to non-enhanced e-books in 12 different conditions and a total of 26 reported outcomes (see Table 2 ). Three of these outcomes were on phonological awareness, with effects ranging from non-significant to small size effects (0.15 to 0.48) in favor of enhanced conditions of e-book use, such as embedded metacognitive guidance in an educational e-book, which was found to support phonological awareness versus using an e-book without any metacognitive guidance [ 47 ]. Studies reported 21 outcomes on vocabulary, three of them with negligible effect sizes. Seven of them had small effect sizes ranging from ES = 0.26 to ES = 0.48. Four of them had medium effect sizes ranging from ES = 0.50 to ES = 0.74, and four of them had large effect sizes. All of them were in favor of the enhanced e-book conditions. Two of the reported outcomes concerning vocabulary were on the PPVT test [ 49 ] with non-significant effect sizes. The conditions that favored the learning of vocabulary were, for example, reading the e-book with adult vocabulary support versus dynamic visual vocabulary support embedded in the e-book [ 24 ]; visual vocabulary support versus no vocabulary support [ 24 ]; reading interactive animated e-books versus reading static e-books [ 48 ]; or embedded questions during the story versus embedded questions after the story [ 50 ]. Finally, two outcomes were reported on reading comprehension with large effect sizes, ES = 0.83 and ES = 0.9. The conditions that favored reading comprehension outcomes were teacher-delivered e-books with the 3R strategy “read, review, and recite” and keyword cues versus the same strategy without key words cues or the recite phase [ 46 ].

3.6. E-Book versus the Regular School Program

Six studies compared e-books with the regular school program in seven different conditions and a total of 17 reported outcomes (see Table 3 ). Three of these outcomes were reported on concepts about print, one of them with a negligible size; one with a medium size, and one with a large size. Four outcomes were reported on phonological awareness skills, one of them non-significant and three of them with medium size effects ranging from 0.52 to 0.54 in favor of the e-book condition. One of the conditions that favored the learning of phonological awareness skills showed children, when they clicked on a word, a large colorful frame displaying its phonetic segments in enlarged letters on the computer screen [ 19 , 51 ]. Studies reported 10 outcomes in vocabulary; eight of them had large effect sizes, in favor of the e-book. Conditions that favored the vocabulary outcomes were, for example, children listening to the audio of the story and engaged independently with the story activities, following verbal instructions that were part of the e-book [ 21 ], or children independently reading the static e-book versus playing computer games [ 48 ]. One outcome was in favor of the e-book condition with a medium size effect, and one non-significant outcome was reported for the PPVT test [ 49 ].

4. Discussion

This review provides a comprehensive assessment of a random control trial (RCT) and research evidence published in the last 10 years on the effectiveness of e-books on emergent literacy skills for children in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. Our findings, although preliminary due to the limited scope of the available literature, provide researchers and practitioners with information for making evidence-based instructional decisions that can inform future research.

The primary objective of the present review was to examine the effectiveness of e-books for supporting early literacy skills, focusing on concepts about print, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Additionally, we explored the contributions of e-books compared to three conditions: Print books, e-books in non-enhanced conditions, and the regular school program.

With regard to the first aim on the effectiveness of e-book interventions for supporting literacy skills for young children, two outcomes out of five on concepts about print were found to produce large effects in favor of e-book interventions. Furthermore, modest gains were observed in the 13 outcomes on phonological awareness in favor of e-book conditions (see Figure 2 ). Additionally, out of 39 outcomes on vocabulary, 7 of them were found to produce small effect sizes, and 21 of them were found to produce medium-to-large effects; that is, 78% of outcomes in vocabulary clearly favored the e-book condition (see Figure 2 ). Finally, out of the 14 studies, only three outcomes were reported on reading comprehension, and two of them were found to produce large size effects in favor of e-book interventions. In considering the effectiveness of e-books for supporting literacy skills in young children, we would like to highlight three key conclusions.

First, as in previous reviews [ 8 , 11 ] and meta-analyses [ 12 , 13 ], we found evidence that e-book interventions have a significant positive effect on measures of vocabulary when used by young readers compared to print books and regular school programs. Vocabulary performance was also higher in the enhanced e-book condition versus the non-enhanced e-book one. Among the key characteristics of e-book reading that could have a positive effect on vocabulary learning is research attention to the interactive dictionary feature accessed through hotspots (prompt access to words pronunciation and meanings) emerged as a factor that strengthens word meaning [ 20 , 24 , 50 ].

Second, as in a previous review [ 11 ], we found that the reading of e-books led to modest gains in phonological awareness in favor of the e-book condition.

Third, due to a limited number of studies addressing concepts about print and reading comprehension (see Figure 3 ), no estimates of the practical effect could be presented for these abilities, although positive effects in favor of the e-book are found in both literacy skills.

Number of literacy outcomes in the three compared conditions.

Concerning the contributions of e-book interventions compared to print books for supporting early literary skills, out of the five reviewed studies, four were found to produce small-to-large size effects in favor of the e-book condition. As in a previous meta-analysis [ 12 ], we found that interactive e-book stories showed an advantage of the multimedia element over children encountering traditional print books without receiving adult support. This finding, reported in the reviewed studies [ 20 , 44 ], might suggest that the multimedia features provide similar scaffolding to that of an adult for children’s literacy experiences. Interactive e-books with audio narration allow children to learn vocabulary [ 20 , 44 ] and become aware of sounds [ 20 , 41 ], indicating that using e-books independently may be a valuable practice for promoting children’s acquisition of emergent literacy skills without adult assistance when teachers or parents are otherwise occupied. However, previous research concluded that learning improves when the e-book is shared with an adult [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]; digital literacy activities, such as e-book reading, could ameliorate the lack of adult support during story reading [ 44 ] and give educators and parents extra time, which may be needed in the context of distress or crisis, such as the current pandemic situation.

Similarly, all seven reviewed studies that compared enhanced e-book reading interventions to e-book non-enhanced conditions reported non-significant to large effect sizes in favor of enhanced e-book interventions. The e-books selected in the enhanced conditions of the reviewed studies presented interactive characteristics, illustrations, automatic animations, and hotspots that are activated by touching or pressing the touch screen to generate sound and animation [ 24 , 42 , 44 , 45 ]. Consequently, the selected e-books are easily accessible for emergent readers who cannot yet decode text or are just beginning to learn to decode it in comparison with non-enhanced, non-interactive, or static e-books. Well-designed and effective educational e-books for young children can serve as a good opportunity to enhance children’s language and literacy [ 51 ].

Finally, the six studies comparing e-book interventions versus regular school programs reported quite favorable outcomes of e-book intervention. However, while preschool staff are aware of ways in which literacy might be supported, the learning that can ensue from interactions with technology has not yet been fully recognized, and little attention has been paid to the ways in which children’s emerging competences with technology are supported and can be ameliorated [ 56 ]. In fact, of the 14 selected studies for the present review, only one of them [ 46 ] is delivered by teachers. Educators and parents are concerned about the perceived negative effects of digital media on children’s health [ 1 ]. Nonetheless, guidance on the use of the e-book in schools and at home may be more helpful than restrictions and warnings regarding the risk of young children’s exposure to digital activities and screens.

To address the last aim of the present study, we discuss some aspects of the reviewed studies that are worth mentioning. The first is related to special populations. In the present review, special attention was given to the effects of e-book interventions for the different groups of children by testing every effect separately for disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. We found that children at risk of learning disabilities [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 47 ], ELL [ 42 ], and low SES [ 51 ] received a clear positive impact from e-book interventions in all the studied literacy abilities. It is plausible that for children who do not fully understand the story of a book because they lack the language and comprehension skills necessary, non-verbal information from animations and sound effects can bridge the gaps [ 13 ]. Additionally, the “app gap” has shrunk substantially, and more children now have access to digital devices [ 2 ]; this could create opportunities for children from different backgrounds in online learning conditions, which, for example, has been the case in the present crisis situation.

A second aspect is related to the quality of e-book design and appropriate selection. Although today, e-books, on one hand, have a more educational value for young children compared to those that were on the market a decade ago [ 16 ], on the other hand, older types of digital books, which include sound, animations, and interactive hotspots, unlike modern e-books, are operated by a mouse on a desktop computer, which is much less intuitive than modern tablets where children can use their fingers on a touch screen [ 4 ]. However, regarding these recent improvements in e-book design, educators and parents need advice about principles of good educational e-books for young children. E-book analyses are needed to make recommendations on what comprises good e-books for young children in order to better serve designers, parents, educators, and children [ 16 ].

A third aspect worth mentioning is related to adult implications in e-book interventions. As stated above, the literature base offers preliminary evidence suggesting that adult support may provide additional benefits beyond the interactive features in e-books [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. However, previous research suggests that young children acquire a wide range of competencies when interacting with technology, which are developed in ways that are not necessarily the result of direct teaching [ 57 ]. Consequently, the adult role may move away from direct support while using the e-book to a more distal role, centering on selection and encouragement [ 3 ] and the design of appropriate strategies [ 46 ] and contexts [ 21 ] to learn from e-books.

The fourth aspect refers to the possible negative effects of digital media on children’s health. Internet Gaming Disorder and Gaming Disorder have been included as conditions in the DSM-5 [ 33 ] and the ICD-11 [ 32 ] respectively, justifying more clinical research and experience on this topic. As Wolf remarks, the reality is that we cannot go back; nor should we move ahead thoughtlessly. In this sense research conducted by E-READ network, New America, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and the MacArthur Foundation program encourage educators to help the habits that spur learning no matter where the text comes from, no matter whether the image is on paper or screen [ 58 ].

Finally, we would like to consider the limited number of intervention sessions of the reviewed studies, ranging from 2 to 16 sessions. In this sense, one of the selected studies [ 51 ] found that the contribution of repeated reading (3 vs. 6 repetitions) contributed to greater vocabulary gains for preschool and kindergarten children after six repetitions compared to three repetitions. Similarly, only one of the reviewed studies [ 21 ] presents a follow up of the outcomes. Although the present research findings suggest that reviewed e-book interventions can be effective to increase phonological awareness and vocabulary outcomes among young children, the extent to which gains are generalized and maintained over time has been, at best, scarcely examined. Studies with more intervention and follow-up sessions are needed to better understand the effectiveness of e-book interventions.

Currently, children across all levels of society are using digital technologies and mobile media on a daily basis [ 1 , 2 , 34 ]. However, research on the educational value of digital literacy for children is still in its early stages. We are only beginning to understand what this digital shift means for young children’s literacy development [ 3 ]. However, there is evidence of how children can improve their emergent literacy skills using e-books. Carefully chosen e-books presented on a tablet can offer a highly independent learning experience for young children. As technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, practitioners and parents must be guided, not only on the frequency and content of the media their child uses, but also on how to introduce media at schools and at home in dedicated spaces and at set times, and how to initiate social and creative ways to use digital media—all of this must take place without displacing their child’s basic needs [ 34 ].

With the current health crisis, we have learned that it is possible and highly probable that distance learning involving schools and families assisting children will play a key role in education in the future. Reading is a key academic and life skill that should be encouraged from the early stages of life; not all young children have the opportunity to attend school but can use e-books and digital devices to develop literacy [ 21 ]. Therefore, parents and practitioners need a better understanding on how e-books, and what type of e-books, could contribute to the development of emergent literacy skills in young children, taking into account the recommendations given by international organizations to avoid health issues in children [ 25 ].

5. Conclusions

In the present research synthesis, including 14 studies and 1138 children aged 7 years or younger, we found evidence that e-book stories improve phonological awareness and vocabulary as compared to traditional stories and regular school programs. Additionally, well-selected, animated, and interactive e-books presented in contexts and situations carefully designed by researchers showed better outcomes in literacy skills than older types of static digital books. The addition of enhanced conditions in the software and selection of the e-book, as well as the systematic adult planning of intervention sessions, resulted in greater intervention effects than non-enhanced conditions.

Young children can listen to storybooks not only when an adult reads to them from a printed version, but also by themselves using e-books on computers and tablets. Results of the present study show that the presence of an adult does not have an advantage for phonological awareness and vocabulary learning. We are aware that young children learn best from exchanges with caring adults, but in the case of learning with e-books, their role might shift away from direct support to a more distal role while children are using the e-book (i.e., adequate selection of the e-book, the design of strategies, and the adaptation to the context where the e-book is used).

Children living in a deprived context, at risk of learning disabilities, and English Language Learners benefited from all the reviewed e-book interventions, which highly improved their literacy skills, regarding concepts about print, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Digital learning and e-book reading represent a potential compensatory strategy for these children.

Although we found positive results in favor of e-book interventions, the present study findings should be interpreted with caution due to the limited scope of the available literature, the limited number of intervention sessions, as well as the lack of follow-up studies to test if e-book interventions produce lasting and generalizable skill gains.

However, in the current crisis situation, online learning has increased in all countries, and practitioners and families should receive advice on quality e-books that could be used with young children and on how to organize appropriate learning environments using e-books. The goal is to continue to promote literacy in this key state of development, which is related to emergent reading and reading achievement, even in the most adverse contexts and situations.

The findings of the present study should be interpreted with caution due to a limited number of studies included. In order to better understand the impact of e-book on children’s emergent literacy skills, future research on e-book interventions must (a) involve schools and families from socio-demographically diverse areas and (b) implement study designs over longer periods of time.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, C.L.-E., S.V.-M. and V.G.-O.; methodology, C.L.-E., S.V.-M. and V.G.-O.; formal analysis, C.L.-E.; investigation, C.L.-E., S.V.-M. and V.G.-O.; resources, C.L.-E., S.V.-M. and V.G.-O.; data curation, C.L.-E., S.V.-M. and V.G.-O.; writing—original draft preparation, C.L.-E.; writing—review and editing, C.L.-E. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

What is artificial general intelligence (AGI)?

You’ve read the think pieces. AI—in particular, the generative AI (gen AI) breakthroughs achieved in the past year or so—is poised to revolutionize not just the way we create content but the very makeup of our economies and societies as a whole. But although gen AI tools such as ChatGPT may seem like a great leap forward, in reality they are just a step in the direction of an even greater breakthrough: artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on AGI

Aamer Baig is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office; Federico Berruti is a partner in the Toronto office; Ben Ellencweig is a senior partner in the Stamford, Connecticut, office; Damian Lewandowski is a consultant in the Miami office; Roger Roberts is a partner in the Bay Area office, where Lareina Yee is a senior partner;  Alex Singla  is a senior partner in the Chicago office and the global leader of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey;  Kate Smaje  and Alex Sukharevsky  are senior partners in the London office;   Jonathan Tilley is a partner in the Southern California office; and Rodney Zemmel is a senior partner in the New York office.

AGI is AI with capabilities that rival those of a human . While purely theoretical at this stage, someday AGI may replicate human-like cognitive abilities including reasoning, problem solving, perception, learning, and language comprehension. When AI’s abilities are indistinguishable from those of a human, it will have passed what is known as the Turing test , first proposed by 20th-century computer scientist Alan Turing.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. AI has made significant strides in recent years, but no AI tool to date has passed the Turing test. We’re still far from reaching a point where AI tools can understand, communicate, and act with the same nuance and sensitivity of a human—and, critically, understand the meaning behind it. Most researchers and academics believe we are decades away from realizing AGI; a few even predict we won’t see AGI this century (or ever). Rodney Brooks, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and cofounder of iRobot, believes AGI won’t arrive until the year 2300 .

If you’re thinking that AI already seems pretty smart, that’s understandable. We’ve seen gen AI  do remarkable things in recent years, from writing code to composing sonnets in seconds. But there’s a critical difference between AI and AGI. Although the latest gen AI technologies, including ChatGPT, DALL-E, and others, have been hogging headlines, they are essentially prediction machines—albeit very good ones. In other words, they can predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the answer to a specific prompt because they’ve been trained on huge amounts of data. This is impressive, but it’s not at a human level of performance in terms of creativity, logical reasoning, sensory perception, and other capabilities . By contrast, AGI tools could feature cognitive and emotional abilities (like empathy) indistinguishable from those of a human. Depending on your definition of AGI, they might even be capable of consciously grasping the meaning behind what they’re doing.

The timing of AGI’s emergence is uncertain. But when it does arrive—and it likely will at some point—it’s going to be a very big deal for every aspect of our lives, businesses, and societies. Executives can begin working now to better understand the path to machines achieving human-level intelligence and making the transition to a more automated world.

Learn more about QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey .

What is needed for AI to become AGI?

Here are eight capabilities AI needs to master before achieving AGI. Click each card to learn more.

How will people access AGI tools?

Today, most people engage with AI in the same ways they’ve accessed digital power for years: via 2D screens such as laptops, smartphones, and TVs. The future will probably look a lot different. Some of the brightest minds (and biggest budgets) in tech are devoting themselves to figuring out how we’ll access AI (and possibly AGI) in the future. One example you’re likely familiar with is augmented reality and virtual reality headsets , through which users experience an immersive virtual world . Another example would be humans accessing the AI world through implanted neurons in the brain. This might sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, but it’s not. In January 2024, Neuralink implanted a chip in a human brain, with the goal of allowing the human to control a phone or computer purely by thought.

A final mode of interaction with AI seems ripped from sci-fi as well: robots. These can take the form of mechanized limbs connected to humans or machine bases or even programmed humanoid robots.

What is a robot and what types of robots are there?

The simplest definition of a robot is a machine that can perform tasks on its own or with minimal assistance from humans. The most sophisticated robots can also interact with their surroundings.

Programmable robots have been operational since the 1950s. McKinsey estimates that 3.5 million robots are currently in use, with 550,000 more deployed every year. But while programmable robots are more commonplace than ever in the workforce, they have a long way to go before they outnumber their human counterparts. The Republic of Korea, home to the world’s highest density of robots, still employs 100 times as many humans as robots.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

But as hardware and software limitations become increasingly surmountable, companies that manufacture robots are beginning to program units with new AI tools and techniques. These dramatically improve robots’ ability to perform tasks typically handled by humans, including walking, sensing, communicating, and manipulating objects. In May 2023, Sanctuary AI, for example, launched Phoenix, a bipedal humanoid robot that stands 5’ 7” tall, lifts objects weighing as much as 55 pounds, and travels three miles per hour—not to mention it also folds clothes, stocks shelves, and works a register.

As we edge closer to AGI, we can expect increasingly sophisticated AI tools and techniques to be programmed into robots of all kinds. Here are a few categories of robots that are currently operational:

• Stand-alone autonomous industrial robots : Equipped with sensors and computer systems to navigate their surroundings and interact with other machines, these robots are critical components of the modern automated manufacturing industry.
• Collaborative robots : Also known as cobots, these robots are specifically engineered to operate in collaboration with humans in a shared environment. Their primary purpose is to alleviate repetitive or hazardous tasks. These types of robots are already being used in environments such as restaurant kitchens and more.
• Mobile robots : Utilizing wheels as their primary means of movement, mobile robots are commonly used for materials handling in warehouses and factories. The military also uses these machines for various purposes, such as reconnaissance and bomb disposal.
• Human–hybrid robots : These robots have both human and robotic features. This could include a robot with an appearance, movement capabilities, or cognition that resemble those of a human, or a human with a robotic limb or even a brain implant.
• Humanoids or androids : These robots are designed to emulate the appearance, movement, communicative abilities, and emotions of humans while continuously enhancing their cognitive capabilities via deep learning models. In other words, humanoid robots will think like a human, move like a human, and look like a human.

What advances could speed up the development of AGI?

Advances in algorithms, computing, and data  have brought about the recent acceleration of AI. We can get a sense of what the future may hold by looking at these three capabilities:

Algorithmic advances and new robotics approaches . We may need entirely new approaches to algorithms and robots to achieve AGI. One way researchers are thinking about this is by exploring the concept of embodied cognition. The idea is that robots will need to learn very quickly from their environments through a multitude of senses, just like humans do when they’re very young. Similarly, to develop cognition in the same way humans do, robots will need to experience the physical world like we do (because we’ve designed our spaces based on how our bodies and minds work).

The latest AI-based robot systems are using gen AI technologies including large language models (LLMs) and large behavior models (LBMs). LLMs give robots advanced natural-language-processing capabilities like what we’ve seen with generative AI models and other LLM-enabled tools. LBMs allow robots to emulate human actions and movements. These models are created by training AI on large data sets of observed human actions and movements. Ultimately, these models could allow robots to perform a wide range of activities with limited task-specific training.

A real advance would be to develop new AI systems that start out with a certain level of built-in knowledge, just like a baby fawn knows how to stand and feed without being taught. It’s possible that the recent success of deep-learning-based AI systems may have drawn research attention away from the more fundamental cognitive work required to make progress toward AGI.

• Computing advancements. Graphics processing units (GPUs) have made the major AI advances of the past few years possible . Here’s why. For one, GPUs are designed to handle multiple tasks related to visual data simultaneously, including rendering images, videos, and graphics-related computations. Their efficiency at handling massive amounts of visual data makes them useful in training complex neural networks. They also have a high memory bandwidth, meaning faster data transfer. Before AGI can be achieved, similar significant advancements will need to be made in computing infrastructure. Quantum computing  is touted as one way of achieving this. However, today’s quantum computers, while powerful, aren’t yet ready for everyday applications. But once they are, they could play a role in the achievement of AGI.

Growth in data volume and new sources of data . Some experts believe 5G  mobile infrastructure could bring about a significant increase in data. That’s because the technology could power a surge in connected devices, or the Internet of Things . But, for a variety of reasons, we think most of the benefits of 5G have already appeared . For AGI to be achieved, there will need to be another catalyst for a huge increase in data volume.

New robotics approaches could yield new sources of training data. Placing human-like robots among us could allow companies to mine large sets of data that mimic our own senses to help the robots train themselves. Advanced self-driving cars are one example: data is being collected from cars that are already on the roads, so these vehicles are acting as a training set for future self-driving cars.

What can executives do about AGI?

AGI is still decades away, at the very least. But AI is here to stay—and it is advancing extremely quickly. Smart leaders can think about how to respond to the real progress that’s happening, as well as how to prepare for the automated future. Here are a few things to consider:

• Stay informed about developments in AI and AGI . Connect with start-ups and develop a framework for tracking progress in AGI that is relevant to your business. Also, start to think about the right governance, conditions, and boundaries for success within your business and communities.
• Invest in AI now . “The cost of doing nothing,” says McKinsey senior partner Nicolai Müller , “is just too high  because everybody has this at the top of their agenda. I think it’s the one topic that every management board  has looked into, that every CEO  has explored across all regions and industries.” The organizations that get it right now will be poised to win in the coming era.
• Continue to place humans at the center . Invest in human–machine interfaces, or “human in the loop” technologies that augment human intelligence. People at all levels of an organization need training and support to thrive in an increasingly automated world. AI is just the latest tool to help individuals and companies alike boost their efficiency.
• Consider the ethical and security implications . This should include addressing cybersecurity , data privacy, and algorithm bias.
• Build a strong foundation of data, talent, and capabilities . AI runs on data; having a strong foundation of high-quality data is critical to its success.
• Organize your workers for new economies of scale and skill . Yesterday’s rigid organizational structures and operating models aren’t suited to the reality of rapidly advancing AI. One way to address this is by instituting flow-to-the-work models, where people can move seamlessly between initiatives and groups.
• Place small bets to preserve strategic options in areas of your business that are exposed to AI developments . For example, consider investing in technology firms that are pursuing ambitious AI research and development projects in your industry. Not all these bets will necessarily pay off, but they could help hedge some of the existential risk your business may face in the future.

Learn more about QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey . And check out AI-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced:

• “ Generative AI in operations: Capturing the value ,” January 3, 2024, Marie El Hoyek and  Nicolai Müller
• “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” June 14, 2023, Michael Chui , Eric Hazan , Roger Roberts , Alex Singla , Kate Smaje , Alex Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Rodney Zemmel
• “ What every CEO should know about generative AI ,” May 12, 2023, Michael Chui , Roger Roberts , Tanya Rodchenko, Alex Singla , Alex Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Delphine Zurkiya
• “ An executive primer on artificial general intelligence ,” April 29, 2020, Federico Berruti , Pieter Nel, and Rob Whiteman
• “ Notes from the AI frontier: Applications and value of deep learning ,” April 17, 2018, Michael Chui , James Manyika , Mehdi Miremadi, Nicolaus Henke, Rita Chung, Pieter Nel, and Sankalp Malhotra
• “ Augmented and virtual reality: The promise and peril of immersive technologies ,” October 3, 2017, Stefan Hall and Ryo Takahashi

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In One Key A.I. Metric, China Pulls Ahead of the U.S.: Talent

China has produced a huge number of top A.I. engineers in recent years. New research shows that, by some measures, it has already eclipsed the United States.

By Paul Mozur and Cade Metz

Paul Mozur reported from Taipei, Taiwan, and Cade Metz from San Francisco.

When it comes to the artificial intelligence that powers chatbots like ChatGPT, China lags behind the United States . But when it comes to producing the scientists behind a new generation of humanoid technologies, China is pulling ahead.

New research shows that China has by some metrics eclipsed the United States as the biggest producer of A.I. talent, with the country generating almost half the world’s top A.I. researchers. By contrast, about 18 percent come from U.S. undergraduate institutions, according to the study , from MacroPolo, a think tank run by the Paulson Institute, which promotes constructive ties between the United States and China.

The findings show a jump for China, which produced about one-third of the world’s top talent three years earlier. The United States, by contrast, remained mostly the same. The research is based on the backgrounds of researchers whose papers were published at 2022’s Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS, as it is known, is focused on advances in neural networks , which have anchored recent developments in generative A.I.

The talent imbalance has been building for the better part of a decade. During much of the 2010s, the United States benefited as large numbers of China’s top minds moved to American universities to complete doctoral degrees. A majority of them stayed in the United States. But the research shows that trend has also begun to turn, with growing numbers of Chinese researchers staying in China.

What happens in the next few years could be critical as China and the United States jockey for primacy in A.I. — a technology that can potentially increase productivity, strengthen industries and drive innovation — turning the researchers into one of the most geopolitically important groups in the world.

Generative A.I. has captured the tech industry in Silicon Valley and in China, causing a frenzy in funding and investment. The boom has been led by U.S. tech giants such as Google and start-ups like OpenAI. That could attract China’s researchers, though rising tensions between Beijing and Washington could also deter some, experts said.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

China has nurtured so much A.I. talent partly because it invested heavily in A.I. education. Since 2018, the country has added more than 2,000 undergraduate A.I. programs, with more than 300 at its most elite universities, said Damien Ma, the managing director of MacroPolo, though he noted the programs were not heavily focused on the technology that had driven breakthroughs by chatbots like ChatGPT.

“A lot of the programs are about A.I. applications in industry and manufacturing, not so much the generative A.I. stuff that’s come to dominate the American A.I. industry at the moment,” he said.

While the United States has pioneered breakthroughs in A.I., most recently with the uncanny humanlike abilities of chatbots , a significant portion of that work was done by researchers educated in China.

Researchers originally from China now make up 38 percent of the top A.I. researchers working in the United States, with Americans making up 37 percent, according to the research. Three years earlier, those from China made up 27 percent of top talent working in the United States, compared with 31 percent from the United States.

“The data shows just how critical Chinese-born researchers are to the United States for A.I. competitiveness,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies Chinese A.I.

He added that the data seemed to show the United States was still attractive. “We’re the world leader in A.I. because we continue to attract and retain talent from all over the world, but especially China,” he said.

Pieter Abbeel, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a founder of Covariant , an A.I. and robotics start-up, said working alongside large numbers of Chinese researchers was taken for granted inside the leading American companies and universities.

“It’s just a natural state of affairs,” he said.

In the past, U.S. defense officials were not too concerned about A.I. talent flows from China, partly because many of the biggest A.I. projects did not deal with classified data and partly because they reasoned that it was better to have the best minds available. That so much of the leading research in A.I. is published openly also held back worries.

Despite bans introduced by the Trump administration that prohibit entry to the United States for students from some military-linked universities in China and a relative slowdown in the flow of Chinese students into the country during Covid, the research showed large numbers of the most promising A.I. minds continued coming to the United States to study.

But this month, a Chinese citizen who was an engineer at Google was charged with trying to transfer A.I. technology — including critical microchip architecture — to a Beijing-based company that paid him in secret , according to a federal indictment.

The substantial numbers of Chinese A.I. researchers working in the United States now present a conundrum for policymakers, who want to counter Chinese espionage while not discouraging the continued flow of top Chinese computer engineers into the United States, according to experts focused on American competitiveness.

“Chinese scholars are almost leading the way in the A.I. field,” said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor and researcher of A.I. at Arizona State University. If policymakers try to bar Chinese nationals from research in the United States, he said, they are “shooting themselves in the foot.”

The track record of U.S. policymakers is mixed. A policy by the Trump administration aimed at curbing Chinese industrial espionage and intellectual property theft has since been criticized for errantly prosecuting a number of professors. Such programs, Chinese immigrants said, have encouraged some to stay in China.

For now, the research showed, most Chinese who complete doctorates in the United States stay in the country, helping to make it the global center of the A.I. world. Even so, the U.S. lead has begun to slip, to hosting about 42 percent of the world’s top talent, down from about 59 percent three years ago, according to the research.

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Baltimore bridge collapse: a bridge engineer explains what happened, and what needs to change

Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Monash University

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Colin Caprani receives funding from the Department of Transport (Victoria) and the Level Crossing Removal Project. He is also Chair of the Confidential Reporting Scheme for Safer Structures - Australasia, Chair of the Australian Regional Group of the Institution of Structural Engineers, and Australian National Delegate for the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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When the container ship MV Dali, 300 metres long and massing around 100,000 tonnes, lost power and slammed into one of the support piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the bridge collapsed in moments . Six people are presumed dead, several others injured, and the city and region are expecting a months-long logistical nightmare in the absence of a crucial transport link.

It was a shocking event, not only for the public but for bridge engineers like me. We work very hard to ensure bridges are safe, and overall the probability of being injured or worse in a bridge collapse remains even lower than the chance of being struck by lightning.

However, the images from Baltimore are a reminder that safety can’t be taken for granted. We need to remain vigilant.

So why did this bridge collapse? And, just as importantly, how might we make other bridges more safe against such collapse?

A 20th century bridge meets a 21st century ship

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was built through the mid 1970s and opened in 1977. The main structure over the navigation channel is a “continuous truss bridge” in three sections or spans.

The bridge rests on four supports, two of which sit each side of the navigable waterway. It is these two piers that are critical to protect against ship impacts.

And indeed, there were two layers of protection: a so-called “dolphin” structure made from concrete, and a fender. The dolphins are in the water about 100 metres upstream and downstream of the piers. They are intended to be sacrificed in the event of a wayward ship, absorbing its energy and being deformed in the process but keeping the ship from hitting the bridge itself.

The fender is the last layer of protection. It is a structure made of timber and reinforced concrete placed around the main piers. Again, it is intended to absorb the energy of any impact.

Fenders are not intended to absorb impacts from very large vessels . And so when the MV Dali, weighing more than 100,000 tonnes, made it past the protective dolphins, it was simply far too massive for the fender to withstand.

Read more: I've captained ships into tight ports like Baltimore, and this is how captains like me work with harbor pilots to avoid deadly collisions

Video recordings show a cloud of dust appearing just before the bridge collapsed, which may well have been the fender disintegrating as it was crushed by the ship.

Once the massive ship had made it past both the dolphin and the fender, the pier – one of the bridge’s four main supports – was simply incapable of resisting the impact. Given the size of the vessel and its likely speed of around 8 knots (15 kilometres per hour), the impact force would have been around 20,000 tonnes .

Bridges are getting safer

This was not the first time a ship hit the Francis Scott Bridge. There was another collision in 1980 , damaging a fender badly enough that it had to be replaced.

Around the world, 35 major bridge collapses resulting in fatalities were caused by collisions between 1960 and 2015, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Collisions between ships and bridges in the 1970s and early 1980s led to a significant improvement in the design rules for protecting bridges from impact.

Further impacts in the 1970s and early 1980s instigated significant improvements in the design rules for impact.

The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering’s Ship Collision with Bridges guide, published in 1993, and the American Association of State Highway and Transporation Officials’ Guide Specification and Commentary for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges (1991) changed how bridges were designed.

In Australia, the Australian Standard for Bridge Design (published in 2017) requires designers to think about the biggest vessel likely to come along in the next 100 years, and what would happen if it were heading for any bridge pier at full speed. Designers need to consider the result of both head-on collisions and side-on, glancing blows. As a result, many newer bridges protect their piers with entire human-made islands.

Of course, these improvements came too late to influence the design of the Francis Scott Key Bridge itself.

Lessons from disaster

So what are the lessons apparent at this early stage?

First, it’s clear the protection measures in place for this bridge were not enough to handle this ship impact. Today’s cargo ships are much bigger than those of the 1970s, and it seems likely the Francis Scott Key Bridge was not designed with a collision like this in mind.

So one lesson is that we need to consider how the vessels near our bridges are changing. This means we cannot just accept the structure as it was built, but ensure the protection measures around our bridges are evolving alongside the ships around them.

Second, and more generally, we must remain vigilant in managing our bridges. I’ve written previously about the current level of safety of Australian bridges, but also about how we can do better.

This tragic event only emphasises the need to spend more on maintaining our ageing infrastructure. This is the only way to ensure it remains safe and functional for the demands we put on it today.

• Engineering
• Infrastructure
• Urban infrastructure
• container ships
• Baltimore bridge collapse

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Global smartphone market set to rebound in 2024, report says

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Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar

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US, Canadian companies kick off 2024 with layoffs

Companies in the United States and Canada have kicked off 2024 with thousands of job cuts across sectors, signaling that the spate of layoffs seen in 2023 could persist as they scramble to rein in costs.