YouTube Video — Transcript

When was the last time you opened a book and made it through a full reading session without checking your phone, skipping ahead, or at least wondering when the author was finally going to get to the point?

Over the last 20 years, much of the text we consume has moved online and the way that text is structured is very different from books and other traditional long-form writing.

Digital text is short and it's self-contained, and you can jump in anytime, anywhere, either way, it doesn't matter, it's not going to affect how well you understand it.

And when you interact with text like that thousands of times over the years, it becomes automatic, it becomes the normal way that you read because your brain naturally adapts to the structures that it sees the most.

So today, I want to talk about that, I want to talk about how the shape and the structure of digital text is different from books and more importantly, how that difference has changed our reading habits, our behaviors, and our overall approach to reading.

Now, of course, digital text isn't just one thing, it comes in many different forms.

There's comment feeds, blog posts, community sites, newsletters, many different sources.

But usage data from data reportal suggests that a very large share of our time online is spent on platforms that have a specific type of text in common, and that is feed-based modular text.

So this would be, for example, comments in this video, they're short, you can understand them quickly and easily, and they're easy to skim.

Now, one of the things that's really different about this kind of text is that comprehension isn't dependent on reading it in any specific sequence or order.

You can start at the top, you can start at the bottom, or just start somewhere in the middle, and you can stop anytime too, you can read just one comment, or you can read them all.

Either way, it's not really going to change the overall reading experience.

This kind of text also tends to be self-contained, each comment or section can be understood in isolation of everything else, it's like it's a single or complete thought all on its own.

Even online articles are often adapted to fit this structure, like this one from Harvard Health Publishing, so we have five timeless habits for better health, beginning with this first habit, bring mindfulness into your day.

Each of the five are listed with these big bold headings, and in many ways, it's just like a comment feed.

It's an unordered list of main points or takeaways.

If you change the order that these habits are presented, it wouldn't affect comprehension, and like comments, each of the habits can be read and understood independent of each other.

You know, if you didn't want to read the section about prioritizing sleep, just skip it.

Either way, the article's going to still make sense.

Now, compare that to books.

You know, books are made up of many different paragraphs, sections, and chapters, etcetera, and every element is meant to function together, you know, as a whole.

In many cases, books are meant to be read in sequence from beginning to end.

Now, of course, this isn't true for books like dictionaries or a lot of reference books.

But for novels and most non-fiction books, you don't skip around or rearrange the order because each sentence, paragraph, and chapter depends on what came before and often hints at what's going to come next.

In fiction, the story world is built up over time and it's difficult or maybe even impossible to draw meaning from a single paragraph at some random point in the book.

You need that background knowledge about the characters and the world that they inhabit to give it context.

Books are also layered, so meaning operates on many different levels.

A ring can be a literal ring in one sense, but also serve as a symbol for power or greed in another.

A story can be entertaining on one level, but in a different way, it can also serve as a warning.

So the structure of digital writing and traditional books is very different.

You know, online text is modular, it's self-contained, and it's non-sequential.

You know, books are interdependent, they're layered, and they progress in a very specific and ordered way.

With books, your brain has to work differently, it has to hold information longer and it has to be able to tolerate higher levels of ambiguity.

Now think about how repeated exposure to just one structure might condition you to read over time.

When most of your reading follows the same modular pattern of being self-contained and non-sequential, you begin to internalize that structure and it becomes your default way of reading any text.

Neuroscientists sometimes call this plasticity because the brain has to reorganize itself around repeated patterns.

You know, the structure that you see most often becomes the structure that you tend to expect.

So when you open a book, for example, you may find yourself evaluating each paragraph or each chapter as if it represents a complete thought all on its own.

Or you may become less aware of the deeper layers of meaning that develop slowly across multiple chapters.

You'll probably develop an impulse to skip over anything that feels difficult or anything you just don't feel like reading.

Digital text also trains you to expect immediate clarity.

You look at this article again, all you have to do is glance at the title and these large bold headings.

And within seconds, you have a very quick, but still relatively complete understanding of it.

But that expectation for instant comprehension isn't going to get you very far with a regular book.

Now, one of my favorite authors is Tana French, she writes these atmospheric literary crime novels.

And one of the main criticisms of her work is that her novels are too slow, they take too long to get going or there's not enough that happens.

And to some extent, I understand, there's some truth to this, they're considered slow burn novels.

But these kinds of criticisms always kind of rub me the wrong way because the writing is really great.

And so the problem is not the book so much as it's a mismatch in expectations that the reader is bringing to her work.

With these kinds of novels, you know, meaning is going to accumulate over several chapters, and if your mind is conditioned to expect understanding or clarity with every single page, then you're going to feel like something's wrong with the story.

And that's fine in one sense, not every book is going to resonate with every reader.

I get that, but when a large share of readers grow accustomed to writing that presents stories in these sort of short, self-contained units, it makes sense that these are the types of books that publishers will want to print and promote.

Open up any one of Dan Brown's novels and see just how short the chapters are.

I don't have a copy of his most recent book, but I've got a copy of The Da Vinci Code here, and this is chapter 50, barely a page and a half.

And this isn't unusual, this is the way he structures and writes all of his novels.

And in some ways, they function just like a feed, it's a quick section, it's a mini cliffhanger, and then a reason to keep on scrolling or at least, in this case, a reason to keep turning the page.

Now, at this point, I have to be really careful here because I don't want to give the impression that you should stop reading digital text altogether.

Although it has changed the way we read, I don't believe that in all cases and in all situations, this is necessarily a bad thing or that it's going to rot your brain or anything like that.

Where we have to be careful though is in allowing one mode to dominate because if it does, then the other will weaken, and so a healthy reading habit is going to try to cultivate both.

In her book, Reader, Come Home, Maryanne Wolf refers to this as biliteracy.

Now, this isn't the ability to speak two languages, this is actually the ability to read fluently and flexibly across both print and digital mediums.

And most importantly, it's the ability to be able to adjust your cognitive approach as needed in certain situations.

A digital literacy approach is the best way to consume text.

Skimming, for example, is really common with digital text, and as I've talked about in other videos, it's a great pre-reading strategy.

It helps prepare your mind and set expectations for what you're about to read.

And this is true even for novels or other long-form texts that require a deeper and more immersive level of attention.

So it can be really useful if used in the right way and at the right time.

But as we've discussed, it shouldn't be the default way that you approach all reading.

For me, I think the goal isn't really to abandon digital reading altogether.

In fact, I think in this world, that may not be possible or even advisable.

A better approach, I think, is to instead try to develop a kind of hyper-awareness about which type of text you're engaging with more often.

Really being conscientious about how much time you're spending with that text, and then be able to adjust your approach accordingly.

Honestly, it sounds like a great topic for a future video.