When it comes to reading for school, old-fashioned paper books are still the king. Though many assumed that e-readers and computers would ruin the paper business forever, textbook producers can rest easy, at least for a while. As Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University, discovered in her research that 92 percent of students prefer hard copy reading to reading on a computer, e-reader or phone.
Of the 300 students that were surveyed in the U.S., Slovakia, Japan and Germany, almost all of the students said that for heavy reading, books were the preferable medium. Articles and light reading were fine on a screen, but when it comes to narrative and textbooks, the screen can be a barrier, reported NBC.
These findings were pretty shocking to Baron. "The group we assumed would gobble [e-reading] up were teenagers and young adults. But they talked about things I didn't think 18 to 26-year-olds cared about anymore," said Baron, according to New Republic. Firstly, they didn't care for the eye strain and the headaches and distraction that e-readers have been found to cause. Secondly, the je-ne-sais-quoi of reading a physical book seemed to matter to the students.
Many talked about the smell, the visual aspect of seeing how much they've read so far, and the sense of accomplishment that comes with seeing a completed book on a shelf, said Baron, on New Republic. It was also discovered that they concentrate best while learning from hard copy text.
It appears that only reason that e-textbook sales continue to rise is the fact that they're much cheaper - but many students wish they could afford hard copy books, whose astronomical prices are a problem for most university and high school students.
When Scholastic conducted research on reading in children in 2014, it also had a similar finding. "Nearly two-thirds of children (65%)-up from 2012 (60%)-agree that they'll always want to read books in print even though there are ebooks available," reported Scholastic on its website.
Good news for book lovers everywhere!
