This essay is not a critique. It is simply a lament. Nobody is at fault for what I describe. Remember that.
My favorite reading tool is my pencil. When I sit down with a book, I love to spend time underlining key passages, writing down the definitions of words I do not know, and commenting on the author's ideas. I make predictions about what will come next. I look for metaphors. I make a note to fact-check the author on a particular claim. I argue with an idea. I look for contradictions.
Writing in my books takes a lot of time, but I like it because it makes me think about what I read. When I am with a book, I can stop for a minute, pencil on the edge of my mouth, scrutinizing what has just been said, and comparing it against what I already know. Authors debate each other in my mind, each giving their explanations for a situation and pointing out what the other missed.
After I finish looking over my text, I give myself time to sit with my thoughts. Perhaps I will put my important notes from a book in a Google Doc, saving them for a moment when I want to review them or pull them out in another conversation. Sometimes I will go to complete a mindless chore, and halfway through folding a t-shirt, I will pull out my phone and write down a connection I just made, perhaps saving it for a future blog post. John Gregory Dunne once said, “The ability to make a note when something comes to mind is the difference between being able to write and not being able to write,” which is a mantra I have taken to heart.
Sometimes I make the mistake of trying to read deeply before bed. When this happens, I will close my book around 9:30, turn off my bedside lamp, and tuck myself under my heavy blankets. Things will be going okay for about two minutes. During that time, I assume it is natural to have my brain still firing off thoughts before trying to fall asleep, but as the minutes progress, I realize my brain has no intent of stopping. I try to let my mind sink into a random stream of dreamy consciousness, but it keeps swimming from thought to thought. I make new connections. I develop my ideas deeper. I argue with authors. I work on solving the larger philosophical problems I face. I love swimming, but I have a test tomorrow, and I need to sleep.
The only way I can fall asleep is lying on my left side, but my nightstand is to my right. Every time I want to take a note, I have to disorganize my carefully arranged blankets, stretch my arm to turn on my lamp, grab a pen, and while awkwardly leaning over my nightstand, supported by an arm digging into the wooden edge, try to write down a few key words that will help me remember my idea the next day. If the message is urgent, I will write it on the back of my hand. I will address it in the morning, and I can no longer forget it.
This goes on for anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour. When I finally do get to sleep, I do so knowing that I will not be getting all the sleep I require to function in all the ways I want the next day.
I used to spend a lot of time on YouTube, but recently, I have been giving up more and more of my time on YouTube to read and to think. YouTube gives me plenty of ideas, hundreds of ideas, from diverse sources with layers of expertise, all condensed into the most consumable and time-efficient mediums possible, available for me to put in the background wherever I go. YouTube does not let me think. I receive information, enough to last me for hours awake at night, but my mind asks for more data rather than to digest its nutrients. It is like I am intellectually standing in front of the refrigerator, taking handfuls of grapes and eating them, knowing that I am not eating because I am hungry, but because I am bored. When I watch a lot of YouTube videos, I have no trouble falling asleep.
When a YouTube video continues playing, I do not get to stop and think. My favorite watching experiences are the ones where I can keep a notepad in front of me, frequently pausing the video and thoroughly analyzing the ideas presented, ready to leave a long comment that my friends will surely laugh at me for putting so much effort into. “That’s such a Roman thing to do,” they say.
And I agree.
But I love every moment of it.
I love getting to think, getting to write, and getting to talk. Many of my comments never receive any likes or replies, but sometimes they become popular. Occasionally, a friend will send me a screenshot of a comment I left, saying how crazy it is that we saw each other from across the digital landscape. Getting likes is nice, but I do not need a reward for thinking. Curiosity rewards itself through its nature as an intrinsic drive. Sometimes, however, it is nice to be seen.
But typing on my phone is annoying. My two thumbs are too slow, my display window is small, and selecting a group of words in my Notes app is tedious at best, frustrating at worst. When I turn a Podcast on in the background, sometimes I do not have easy access to a quick way to write. My hands are already wet, full, or busy. Sometimes my mind will slow down, but my entertainment will keep moving. I receive more information than knowledge.
When I first got Substack, I thought I had found an improvement. “Now,” I thought to myself, “I can consume articles written by others enamored with thinking while still digesting what is said. It will be like having the time to stop during a run or hike and enjoy the nature around me.”
To me, Substack is an improvement over YouTube because I cannot use Substack while doing something else. I also love receiving articles in my email inbox, rather than in a messy space with hundreds of irrelevant distractions floating around. With Substack, I always have the chance to sit down and write about my thoughts, and in the comment section, there is a greater chance that someone else will find my thoughts and have something to say.
Substack should be great. But I cannot read when I read Substack articles.
I can consume the content they give to me. I can make notes in a separate Google Doc, I can make comments and discuss with others, and I can make sure all of my subscribers know what quotes I think are important.
But I cannot irreverently sweep my pencil across the page, making authors fight each other, highlighting passages that I will end up eventually erasing anyway, and writing in the occasional “lmao” on a weird thing an author said. Highlighted text now disappears the moment I click away. Comments are usually too much effort to make by opening up a new Google Doc. I could write a note, but I like most of my annotations to be personal.
I could take all the steps to consume what is written, taking notes on a Doc, but instead, I find my eyes skimming paragraphs, ignoring details, and skipping chances to Google concepts I am unfamiliar with. There is always more to skim, so why bother stopping to think? There are more ideas to explore, so I should hurry up and consume something new. It is not as if Bentham’s Bulldog wrote his article with any sense of poetic beauty in mind, so why even try to stop and smell the roses? Why should I slow to savor each grape from my refrigerator when a whole bag is waiting to be eaten?
This essay is not a critique. It is simply a lament. A lament for the grapes crushed and swallowed without a second thought, as my mind is focused on a YouTube video I do not even care about. A lament for the knowledge lost when it is replaced with only information. A lament for lost moments of slowing down during a run to see each tree, each blade of grass, each little bump in the dirt. I need to keep running, I have places to be. My training needs to keep going.
I lament losing my ability to read.
I am not the only person who is skimming. Looking through The Substack Post and seeing all the minuscule paragraphs, I cannot help but feel like they were written for a mind like mine, a mind that scans 90% of the first sentence, 80% of the second, 60% of the third, and 40% of the rest. That is, if the rest of the sentences are lucky enough to even be seen. With Substack, I should, in theory, have what I want. I finally have the words, written out in the text in front of me, but I cannot read.
Over the past few decades, behavioral psychologists and educators have begun to research the “screen inferiority effect.” It refers to the observation that people tend to focus less deeply and retain less information when reading off a screen versus reading on paper. A 2018 meta-analysis of 54 studies and over 170,000 people by psychologist Pablo Delgado found that reading off a screen significantly harms reading comprehension. Another meta-analysis, done in 2019 by Virginia Clinton, found the same thing. Interestingly, both meta-analyses found no significant difference in reading comprehension across mediums when used for light reading, like stories and novels. However, when used for textbooks and articles (material that requires “deep” reading), they found wide gaps in the studied groups’ ability to read.
While people can generally identify the main idea of a text equally well on screens and print, one study found that students miss many more key details when reading off a screen, rather than paper. This study found that the reading speed was the same for both the students reading digitally and the students reading off screens.
A different study using eye-tracking technology found that students reading printed text worked more thoroughly, reread lines more often, and ensured they understood a passage before moving on more often, while students reading off screens tended to skim. In this study, students reading off a screen spent less time with the material than when reading off paper. This partially explains the gap in reading comprehension. Additionally, the physical space of using a screen may increase our cognitive load more than reading a book. To navigate a book, you simply need to hold it in front of you and turn the page when it comes time. However, when you are using a screen, constantly increasing your cognitive load by moving your mouse out of the way and scrolling down, your brain is more distracted and does not engage with the content presented as deeply.
UCLA’s Professor Maryanne Wolf argues that screens have trained our brains to skim information rather than deeply process it because of how many forms of social media function. When reading through a group chat, people often skim for the key messages and ignore the rest. When someone scrolls through Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, they look to summarize the messages of posts quickly. This is not a bad thing in itself; we develop this heuristic because it causes us to save time. However, the media we access on screens trains us to think shallowly about other media on screens, which harms our ability to read deeply.
Additionally, the multitasking (constantly switching from activity to activity) nature of screen use makes it harder to engage with its content deeply. When we constantly move from idea to idea, checking notifications, noticing ads, and responding to texts, we lose some of our deep engagement with the thing we are working on. Interestingly, e-readers, such as the Kindle e-ink devices, do not replicate the screen inferiority effect as much as other devices. This might be because of the lack of distractions, but it also might be because of the simpler interface. It is simpler to turn pages on a Kindle than on a laptop, and when a device is only used for reading, the mind might be trained to use it more deeply.
Given how I have been trained to use the internet, I guess it should not be so surprising that even when I get on Substack instead of other social media, I still cannot read.
For more information, here is the ChatGPT deep research page I used to learn more about this topic. Don’t worry, I fact-checked everything GPT said using the linked articles before including the information here. However, GPT was almost entirely hallucination-free (this time).
CLICKBAIT is a composition for string quartet and sampler. It was written by the young composer Ben Nobuto in 2019 and originally performed by the prestigious Ligeti Quartet. It mixes seemingly random audio clips, incessant beeping, and a variety of playing styles amongst the string instruments to create a unique atmosphere, reminiscent of scrolling on the internet.
At first, CLICKBAIT is fun and exciting. We are introduced with a synthesized beeping sound and scattered and nonsensical audio clips that sound like ads. However, we stay on top of it all, aware of everything transpiring. We are having fun. But as we continue onward, the tension starts to build. The strings become messier. The clips become more random. The beeping will not stop. We find ourselves surrounded by a mess we have trapped ourselves in. We know that it is too much for us, but our perceptual curiosity keeps us asking for more.
What follows in the piece secures Nobuto’s work as one of my favorite works of art ever written. I am not going to spoil what happens for you. You can take a moment, learn what it is for yourself, or you can keep scrolling. The choice is yours. Either way, I will not judge you for your decision.
Do you ever read something, fully agree with its message, feel like you should change your lifestyle following what you have learned, then move on to the next thought before doing anything, never making any changes?
I want to do something different, but I do not know how I can change. The truth is, this is not my first time thinking these thoughts. I watched CLICKBAIT for the first time over a year ago, and despite all the time that has passed, I still have so much in common with the person leaving long comments at the top of its comment section. I want to find peace, and I keep setting myself up for moments of quietness, but it is never enough. “The Art of Stillness” by Pico Iyer resonated with me greatly when I watched it for an English assignment, and since then, I have worked to make my life more peaceful. The quiet has undoubtedly made me happier, but I still find myself occasionally trapped in the scattered moments of CLICKBAIT, surrounded by overwhelming sounds, unable to break free and find peace.
Every morning, I stop myself from using my phone for the first fifteen minutes of the day. I long to escape from it permanently. Some days, I will go for hours without checking it, but I know that I cannot stay away from it forever. My phone holds my responsibilities. What if my parents text me? What if something important is happening? In the end, I always need to check it, and I find myself carried away by its empty promises once again.
More than anything, this essay is a lament for lost time. Quiet hours of freedom have fallen away to be replaced by a constant reminder of my responsibilities. The hunger for thoughtless information is insatiable because of the limits on how long I have to benefit from the information I gain. Who has time to stop and think? I need to know how to make this decision now. I only have so many hours remaining. A run never has time to stop; there is always more that needs to be done. Why even savor food? I need to move on quickly; I just do not have enough time.
I have tried to give myself as much stillness as I can, but it will never be enough. There is always more to do, always something pushed back further to gain a fleeting moment of quiet.
But eventually, everyone runs out of time.
Recently, I have been writing articles about how to master all of the most significant cognitive biases in behavioral economics. If you would like to see my attempt at mastering the screen inferiority effect, you should subscribe! Also, if this article resonated with you, please give it a like. It takes you 20 seconds at most, and it makes me feel happy :)
I’m glad I’m not the only one that argues with authors. I have 2 books I’ve filled with quotes and thoughts while reading or listening, mostly reading. Curiousity is a very underrated quality.