Most Americans spend at least 8.5 hours a day looking at a screen, whether a TV set, computer monitor or mobile device, according to a study by Ball State University. Frequently, we use two or three of these devices at once.

That multitasking costs. According to a study by Stanford University, heavy multitaskers:

• Are more easily distracted by “irrelevant environmental stimuli”
• Can recall much less of what they’ve just learned
• Are much less able to concentrate on the task at hand

Now, where was I going with this? Oh, yes.

“The net is, by design, an interruption system, a machine geared for dividing attention,” writes Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

As we “power browse” a dozen web pages at once, check our email 30 or 40 times an hour and text while driving, we become “distracted from distraction by distraction.”

So don’t count on your web visitors being all there when they show up on your web page.

“Psychological research long ago proved what most of us know from experience: frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious,” Carr writes. “The more complex the train of thought we’re involved in, the greater the impairment the distractions cause.”

Links limit learning.

One study at Utah State University tested that theory. Mechanical and manufacturing engineering students studied machining lessons via:

• Linear web pages, where students clicked to move to the next page, like turning the pages in a book
• Linked web pages, where students navigated links on a page to decide which page to visit next

The results?

• Linear learning was faster. Students using the linear lessons finished their studies in half the time that students using the linked module required.
• Linked learning was less effective. Students using the module with links missed 33% more questions on a test than those using the linear web pages. Even simple linking was enough to reduce student scores by two grade points.
• Average learners struggled more with links. A-level students performed equally well with either module. But B- and C-level students fared much worse with the linked pages than with the linear module.

Why? A printed page communicates its argument line by line. That delivers a more coherent view of the world than do short chunks of hyperlinked text.

Plus, navigating links may divert mental energy that people might otherwise spend understanding complex information.

Screen reading cuts comprehension.

When 1 million North Carolina middle-school students received computers and internet access from 2000 to 2005, their math and reading scores declined, found Duke University economists Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd.

The reason: They were distracted by the web. (Hey, given the choice between spending the afternoon solving fraction problems or spending it on DumbWaysToDie, I’d go for the website, too!)

The web’s interactive nature also makes the medium harder to understand. After all, it’s not easy to focus on the text when you’re also clicking and navigating.

When participants in one study read Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” in hypertext, for instance, three-quarters had trouble following the story, according to researchers David S. Miall and Teresa Dobson. Just one in 10 who read linear text struggled to understand the story.

The reason? The web readers’ attention, Miall and Dobson said, “was directed toward the machinery of the hypertext and its functions rather than to the experience offered by the story.”

More so on mobile

These problems are multiplied when people read on mobile devices. Mobile web visitors pay less attention to your message, spend less time on it, read more slowly, understand less, remember less and are less likely to act on your call to action.

The communicator’s bottom line?

This is just one more reminder that humans — adults as well as kids — get distracted when reading your messages online.

The solution? get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and more skimmable.

____

Sources: Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Christine Hailey, “Hypermedia, multimedia and reader cognition: an empirical study,” Technical Communication, Aug. 1, 1998

The post How reading from screen vs. paper affects your brain appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

I don’t know about you, but one of my goals in life is to never write anything that makes my readers throw up, resign or forget where they parked their car.

But that’s actually possible when writing for the web.

That’s because screen reading hurts your web visitors’ eyes, backs and brains.

1. Screen reading hurts readers’ eyes.

Reading on the screen is hard for a simple reason: Our eyes weren’t made to stare at little beige boxes all day. When reading online, your readers face these special eye problems:

• Light. Reading online is like reading with a flashlight shining in your eyes. And you know what happens when you spend your day staring at a lightbulb.
• Blinking. People blink less often when reading online than when reading print. That’s a problem, because blinking is what keeps our eyes moist and relaxed. They also open their eyes wider when reading on the screen. That makes their tears evaporate faster and leads to dry eye.
• Scrolling. The human eye has a normal reflex called optokinetic nystagmus. That’s scientist talk for the way our eyes flit across the screen to follow scrolling type. That constant jumping up and down can wear your readers out, cause eyestrain and cause readers to feel a little seasick. (So you can cause readers to throw up from what you write online.)

• Sore or irritated eyes
• Trouble focusing
• Dry or watery eyes
• Blurred or double vision
• Sensitivity to light
• Shortsightedness

In a 2020 study, more than 9 in 10 the respondents experienced at least one symptom associated with digital device usage.

Mobile matters: Cases of screen sightedness have increased by 35% since smartphones were introduced in the 1990s.

“I’ve had people come to our clinic saying they were going to quit their jobs because they couldn’t take it,” says David Grisham, optometry professor, University of California at Berkeley.

Not exactly the purpose of our intranet, is it?

So you literally can make people resign based on what you write on the web.

Is yours a site for sore eyes?

2. Screen reading hurts readers’ bodies.

Americans are experiencing more back, neck and shoulder problems because of their handheld devices, the American Chiropractic Association announced recently.

Plus, Americans are getting insomnia and body clock confusion from screen reading at night, according to Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. (Another one of my goals in life is to never write anything that makes my readers feel as if they’ve just stumbled off of a flight from Boston to Bhutan.)

Screen reading also causes nausea, headaches and muscle degeneration from sitting, according to the American Cancer Society and The Mayo Clinic. So yes, reading that web page does make your butt look bigger.

Is your site a pain in the ass?

3. Screen reading hurts readers’ brains.

But as writers, our biggest problem is this: Screen reading hurts your brain.

This is your brain on the Web: Constant problem solving (To click or not to click?) plus divided attention (You’ve got mail) lead to cognitive overload.

And cognitive overload, according to Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain, leads us to lose the ability to think and reason.

In fact, a study by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London showed that online multitasking temporarily lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana does. (And, from what I’ve read, is not nearly as entertaining a way to get stupid.)

“Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle,” Carr in The Shallows. “That’s the intellectual environment of the Internet.”

This problem multiplies on mobile.

(So, yes, you can make your web visitors forget where they parked the car.)

So how can you write web content that makes readers click instead of gag? Get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and more skimmable.

___

Sources: Bahkir, F. A., & Grandee, S. S. (2020). Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on digital device-related ocular health. Indian journal of ophthalmology, 68(11), 2378–2383.

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You may have heard that social scientists recently added a new item on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The classic model of what drives human nature looked like this back in the day:

• Self actualization: the feeling of doing what you were put on this planet to do
• Esteem: feeling good about yourself and what you do
• Social needs: having love, a tribe, companionship
• Safety and security: not being afraid of getting eaten by a tiger
• Physiological needs: food and shelter

Our modern world has revealed another, even more basic human need …

… Wi-Fi.

No kidding! And where’s juice? A charger? These are things we need to live through the day!

Mobile has become central to our readers’ daily life. And that’s a problem. Because it’s a lot harder to reach readers on a phone screen than it is to reach them on a laptop or desktop.

When your web visitors are reading on mobile, they:

1. Devote less attention to your message

Readers pay less attention to your page when they’re on their phone screens than their laptops or desktops. That’s because mobile web visitors are likely to get interrupted at any moment.

• They’re cooling their heels with your blog post at the doctor’s office — when their name is called.
• They’re looking at your Facebook status updates in line at the grocery — when it’s their turn to step up to the cash register.
• They’re researching the date of your webinar on the streetcar when they notice it’s their stop. Not only do they forget the date, but they also forget the fact that you’re having a webinar in the first place.

As a result of all of those interruptions, readers also …

2. Spend less time with your message

People spend an average of 150 seconds on a web page visit on their desktops, but only 72 seconds on their phones, according to Mobile HCI.

Which means that attention spans on mobile devices are half as long as on desktops.

Plus, the average time people spend on a page is going down:

• Average time on screen 2004: 150 seconds
• 2012: 75 seconds
• 2023: 47 seconds

Which means attention spans are down 69% in 19 years.

3. Read more slowly

People read 20% to 30% slower online, according to a survey of nearly 30 years of research by Andrew Dillon, Ph.D., of the University of Texas.

Reading on mobile takes even longer, writes Kate Meyer, a user experience specialist for Nielsen Norman Group. People spend about 30 milliseconds more per word when reading on a phone than when reading on a laptop or desktop computer.

Let’s do the math: If readers spend less time and read more slowly, they’re absorbing less of your message.

4. Understand less of your message

Mobile web visitors also comprehend less of your message.

Web pages are 48% harder to understand on an iPhone than on the big screen, according to research by R.I. Singh and colleagues from the University of Alberta. In the study, web visitors understood:

• 39% of what they read on a desktop screen
• Just 19% of what they read on mobile screens

5. Remember less of your message

Short-term memory is bad and getting worse. (I looked up a short-term-memory loss joke for this spot this morning, but I can’t remember what it was.)

Problem is, we can only remember what we can see. With a 3-by-9-inch screen, we can’t see very much. In fact, content displayed above the fold on a 30-inch monitor requires five screens on a smartphone, according to the authors of User Experience for Mobile Applications and Websites.

Reading your web page on a smartphone is like reading War and Peace through a keyhole.

6. Are less likely to act on your message

When the IRS improved its web pages about tax law changes, employee call center accuracy increased by 10%, reports TJ Larkin of Larkin Communications Consulting.

When the bureau printed the exact same web pages and left them in employees’ cubicles, accuracy increased by 42%.

The best way to move readers to act?

Overcome the obstacles of reading on the small screen.

So how do you reach readers online, even when they’re reading on mobile devices? Get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and more skimmable.

The post What are the problems with reading on mobile devices? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Reading on the screen is hard for a simple reason: Our eyes weren’t made to stare at little beige boxes all day.

When reading online, your readers face these special problems:

• Light. Reading online is like reading with a flashlight shining in your eyes. And you know what happens when you spend your day staring at a lightbulb.
• Blinking. People blink less often when reading online than when reading print. That’s a problem, because blinking is what keeps our eyes moist and relaxed. They also open their eyes wider when reading on the screen. That makes their tears evaporate faster and leads to dry eye.
• Scrolling. The human eye has a normal reflex called optokinetic nystagmus. That’s scientist talk for the way our eyes flit across the screen to follow scrolling type. That constant jumping up and down can wear your readers out, cause eyestrain and cause readers to feel a little seasick. (So you can cause readers to throw up from what you write online.)

The result?

Some 12 million Americans visit eye doctors each year because of computer-related problems, according to the American Optometric Association. That’s one out of every five people who come in for an eye exam.

Among the issues:

Computer vision syndrome

Some 50% to 90% of computer users suffer from eye strain, according to WebMD. No wonder computer vision syndrome is recognized by the American Optometric Association. It includes these symptoms:

• Sore or irritated eyes
• Trouble focusing
• Dry or watery eyes
• Blurred or double vision
• Sensitivity to light
• Shortsightedness

Eye strain

People who spend hours staring at a screen suffer chemical changes in their tears similar to folks with dry eye, according to a 2014 Japanese Dry Eye Society study. Symptoms include irritation, burning and blurred vision.

Screen-sightedness

Reading a blog post on an iPhone is like reading War and Peace through a keyhole — with a flashlight shining in your eyes.

No wonder, then, that screen reading causes — in addition to such symptoms as eyestrain and nausea — advancing myopia, aka shortsightedness.

Blame it on smartphones, says British eye surgeon David Allamby of Focus Clinics. He calls this epidemic “screen-sightedness.”

In fact, since smartphones were introduced in the 1990s, the number of people with this condition has increased by 35%, according to Allamby. By 2033, he predicts, half of all 30-year-olds will suffer from screen-sightedness.

A welcome site

Bottom line?

“I’ve had people come to our clinic saying they were going to quit their jobs because they couldn’t take it,” David Grisham, optometry professor at the University of California, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not exactly the purpose of your intranet, is it?

Don’t make your reader turn a blind eye to your message. When you write web content, get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and more skimmable.

The post How reading on screen vs. paper affects eyes appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..