We are all reading more, but are we absorbing less?

Carla Mirza considers the negative effects of smartphone usage on our reading habits

Basic reading skills during a first year Arabic language class at Kings' Dubai school located in Umm Suqeim. Antonie Robertson / The National

The 2016 Year of Reading initiative launched by President Sheikh Khalifa promoted reading and books in schools and universities as well as public and private sector institutions. As we are all aware, social and cultural initiatives of this ilk face many challenges.

Finding the time to pick up a book and focus on reading can be a challenge for infrequent readers, while bookworms of all sorts seem to have an innate or acquired passion driving them to indulge in binge-reading.

In Reading in the Mobile Era, a study on reading in developing countries published in 2014, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation identifies four types of readers of online content: occasional readers read two to four times per month; frequent readers read five to 20 times per month habitual readers read up to 40 times per month, and power readers read more than 40 times per month.

Daily exposure to online content has dramatically changed our overall reading habits.

We seem to increasingly focus on mobile and online reading to keep up with the news cycle, as our fear of missing out drives us to pick up our smartphones for our “fix” of information, whether that be constantly scanning our newsfeeds or skimming through articles. Many of us spend several hours a day doing just that, paying next to no heed to time.

As media outlets strive to create and optimise online content for quick and easy consumption, readers have become compulsive consumers of words. In an era when less is more when it comes to digital media, and more is less when it comes to the plethora of content available at the tips of our fingers, the question is: how much of it do we truly get to read and absorb?

Reading habits in the digital world are clearly different from those from the pre-digital era, though the former has an effect on the latter.

The daily, sometimes hourly, habit of scanning online content, particularly on social media platforms, where the reader consciously selects and reads only portions of the text, is one way to acquire information and to keep track of current events, especially for those of us who are always information thirsty.

But that kind of consumption comes at a price for those people who used to be voracious readers. Those of us who were big consumers of books before the rise of social media find ourselves living under the illusion that a quick fix from a social media newsfeed will quench our thirst.

Acquiring knowledge, as opposed to acquiring information, involves deep reading and an ability to focus. Our “connected lives” are affecting our attention span, and making readers less able to read a whole article, an entire report or make it to the end of a book.

Fast reads satisfy our thirst for information, and grabbing your smartphone for a dose will definitely do just that. In fact, that is all it will do: satisfy that fear of missing out.

So, this evening, clock out of social media for an hour, block the time in your calendar, and make a date with a book you’ve been wanting to read, one that will actually bring you knowledge, not just information.