There’s new information about the increasing dominance of screens in Americans’ reading habits. While 72 percent of adults say they read a book in the last year, almost a third are now reading e-books—not hard-copy books—according to Pew Research.
While screen reading likely isn’t a problem for adults, the same can’t necessarily be said of children, according to new scientific studies. As screen media replaces paper-based reading and writing in many schools, there are concerns about losing the positive effects these experiences have on early brain development.
“A growing body of evidence suggests that screen media use could play a key role in cognition (ie, brain processes involved in knowledge, intellect, and action) and academic performance (ie, academic achievement and abilities) in children and adolescents,” a meta-analysis in the journal JAMA Pediatrics states.”For instance, recent empirical research has reported that screen media use may reduce functional connectivity between cognitive areas.”
A study in the Journal of Research in Reading found that “readers may be more efficient and aware of their performance when reading from paper compared to screens,” a process sometimes called metacognition.
Effects of screen reading and related lack of paper writing have especially been studied in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Research in the journal Frontiers in Neurology looking at children with ADHD and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) found that these conditions were linked to poor performance in skills that include fine-motor skills, handwriting, etc.
“Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are associated with motor impairments, with some children holding a comorbid diagnosis of developmental coordination disorder (DCD),” the researchers noted.
Recent research in the journal eBioMedicine echoes the apparent brain differences between screen and non-screen learning. The authors found that children at higher risk of ADHD or with more severe ADHD symptoms “tend to have longer STU [screen time utilization].”
As with the research in the journal Frontiers in Neurology, the eBioMedicine authors attempt to trace brain effects and write that “tracks” in the brain’s white matter are “linked to visual-related functions,” which excessive screen time may compromise. A study in the Journal of Attention Disorders similarly found that “screen exposure was a risk for inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity behaviors,” in a studied population of urban Chinese children.
Still, Jeanne Stolzer, a professor of child and adolescent development at the University of Nebraska–Kearney, cautioned that ADHD may well be overdiagnosed because of the lucrative medications it enables drug makers to market to boys, such as the amphetamine-linked methylphenidate.
In a paper entitled “Where Have All The Boys Gone? How The Systematic Labeling of Young Males Is Affecting School Performance, Attendance, and Graduation Rates in America,” Stolzer cautions that “the girl way of learning, behaving, and responding has become the ‘gold standard’ in the classroom and boys that do not follow this ‘gold standard’ are often times perceived by teachers to be either learning and/or psychiatrically disordered.”
That said, there are also studies linking ADHD to certain prenatal toxic exposures, including drugs and smoking, as well as premature delivery, low birth weight, and more. A study funded by the National Institutes of Health also linked ADHD to prenatal exposure to acetaminophen, a common painkiller many expectant mothers may take.
Handwriting Might Be a Disappearing Art
Most adults realize they spend little to no time writing by hand anymore, because of texting and typing on electronic devices. Even documents that used to require a signature often allow an initial or mark, especially when they are online. Yet, until fairly recently, reading and writing on paper were the cornerstones of early education.
Still, as early as 1996, Betty Sheffield cautioned in the journal Annals of Dyslexia that there was a “lack of concern about the importance of handwriting in school curricula,” in both the United States and Great Britain. Educators “appear to be unaware of the benefits of effective early teaching [of handwriting].
Often the choice of what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach is left up to the discretion of individual teachers, who typically have been given inadequate preparation for teaching handwriting,” Sheffield wrote. “The decision of whether to begin with manuscript or cursive seems based on custom and opinion instead of any solid empirical evidence.”
In 2020, research in the journal Frontiers in Psychology used high-density electroencephalograms to compare brain activity that occurred during handwriting, typewriting, and drawing. It identified benefits associated with handwriting that could affect how well students remember information.
When handwriting, “brain areas in the parietal and central regions showed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range,” the authors write. “Existing literature suggests that such oscillatory neuronal activity in these particular brain areas is important for memory and for the encoding of new information and, therefore, provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning.”
“We suggest that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting and drawing activities in school to establish the neuronal oscillation patterns that are beneficial for learning,” the researchers wrote.
“We conclude that because of the benefits of sensory-motor integration due to the larger involvement of the senses as well as fine and precisely controlled hand movements when writing by hand and when drawing … is vital to maintain both activities in a learning environment to facilitate and optimize learning.”
The benefits of learning handwriting, sometimes called cursive writing, have also been cited in the journal Psychological Science, which states, “handwriting compared with nonmotor practice produces faster learning and greater generalization to untrained tasks than previously reported.”
Experts Weigh In
Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust, a former president of Harvard University, was astonished when she realized that Generation Z, the group of children and young adults now in school and college, hadn’t learned to read cursive, she recently recounted in an essay in The Atlantic.
According to Faust, cursive was omitted from the new national Common Core standards for K–12 education in 2010 and she discovered in a class that two-thirds of her class couldn’t even read cursive, never mind write it.
“What did they do about signatures?” she asked rhetorically. “They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes.”
Could the students read handwritten comments from professors on their papers and exams? Many said they couldn’t, causing Faust to wonder if professors don’t even know their written remarks are sometimes ignored.
When cursive was first removed from Common Core standards, it provoked an outcry, Faust recounts. Opponents said handwriting provided important connections between the hand and brain, self-discipline, and an expression of identity. In some states, opponents were successful in reintroducing some cursive instruction but Faust believes that handwriting is eventually on the way out.
“Writing is, after all, a technology, and most technologies are sooner or later surpassed and replaced,” she says.
Reasons for Optimism
Some researchers are seeking ways to retain the positive brain effects of pre-screen learning while not turning their backs on the technologies themselves. Researchers published a study in the journal Nature about writing on touchscreens with a novel hand posture they call the FingerPen which allows the benefits of handwriting but on a digital screen.
“A conducted user study shows that the FingerPen is appreciated by users and leads to accurate writing traits,” the researchers stated.
Research in the journal Frontiers of Psychology also supports the idea of a hybrid model in which writing is still utilized without throwing out the screen “with the bathwater,” so to speak. “For young adults, we found that when writing by hand using a digital pen on a touchscreen, brain areas in the parietal and central regions showed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range,” a positive sign, the authors write.