The way we access information, learn, work, and ideate has been completely transformed by the emergence of digital technologies. At this point, after years of increasingly widespread and constant use of these technologies, different studies have already been confirming some effects, results, and preferences of their use. Data has long been available that unequivocally shows that reading on paper is preferred by most readers. There is also research that shows that paper has many advantages in learning, education and business organization compared to digital technologies, as we already observed here.
In this sense, common arguments in favor of paper are:
- Fewer distractions: tablets, computers and smartphones are devices designed and characterized for and by multitasking. Checking emails, social media notifications, instant messages and others translate into distractions that disperse attention and difficulties in the concentration level.
- Less visual fatigue: the light emitted by screens and constant blinking cause eye fatigue that will reduce the ability to maintain sustained attention and concentration.
- Strengthens brain connections: neuroscience explores the differences between stimuli in brain connections when interacting with paper or electronic devices. Indeed, it has already been shown that reading on paper activates areas of the brain that have to do with the physical object: a book -covers, back covers, pages…etc.- is perceived as a complete whole with a beginning and an end; the sight of the object itself and the touch determine how far we have progressed with it. These habits are key for the brain to organize and concentrate.
Neuroscience, in fact, is discovering that books and writing on paper in terms of understanding, learning, memorization or establishing relationships between the parts of a speech are much more effective than digital media. And it already warns about how dopamine, the molecule that anticipates pleasure, is the substance -real, chemical and addictive- with which online media and social networks and other digital platforms and applications provide immediate gratification to the stimuli to achieve engage users. Various recent scientific studies confirm that ‘digital native’ adolescents are already incapable of carrying out the same task for more than 65 seconds in a row, while adults can barely maintain attention on the same subject for 3 minutes in a row. And the fact is that continuous digital stimuli and interruptions make concentration impossible as the ability to focus and maintain attention on a specific task or activity for the time necessary to solve problems. Concentration is the most representative and distinctive attribution and competence of the human being as a specie, and it is dangerously compromised in a critical historical moment like the one we live in right now.
The role of paper in concentration
Not only neuroscience, but also psychology, public health experts and even some Silicon Valley investors agree that technology is very quickly causing an enormous impact on all forms of people’s attention and concentration and an increase of physical and mental fatigue. And they warn that the digital world is increasingly addictive and how the factors that invade our attention are going to become more and more powerful and irresistible.
The participation of the body and physical sensations in mental processes has been demonstrated for decades; now studies confirm that interaction with pencil and paper involves a series of more complex, particular and internal sensorimotor processes for each letter or character we write, and more costly in the consumption of mental resources. This generates:
- More distinctive, stronger, and longer-lasting memory traces. More memorization and recall.
- Greater integration and availability of mental resources.
- Improvement of written composition skills in planning, quality, length, and fluency of the text.
The human mind always carries out its operations in relation to the functioning of the entire body: one does not exist without the other and vice versa, not functions of one that do not influence the other and vice versa. Therefore, writing, reading, and interacting with paper provokes different reactions in our cognitive system depending on the motor and sensory schemes of the experience.
Books and paper text have quantifiable size, shape and weight, our material senses perceive them. Our brain captures them as it does with a physical landscape, through mental maps that directly influence our concentration levels. When we write by hand on paper, we stimulate our spatial organization and hand-eye visual motor coordination, we structure our ideas more and better and we promote our ability to concentrate.
Communication, learning, and work necessarily involve digital technologies, essential in our current world. Screens offer experiences that paper cannot match. We cannot live apart from the digital, but neither can we ignore how these technologies affect and change our capabilities and the reality in which we move. Meanwhile, printed text and manual writing on paper focus our attention and promote the intense concentration crucial in solving complex problems that distinguishes us as a specie.
We will only be able to fully take advantages of the digital world benefits if we do not renounce or abandon the virtues that the use of pencil, paper and traditional printed texts provide to our attention and concentration abilities. Information and knowledge of these effects are necessary because the decisions and uses of each person depend on them.
