Studies show that students of all ages, from elementary school to college, tend to absorb more when they’re reading on paper rather than screens. The advantage for paper is a small one, but it’s been replicated in dozens of laboratory experiments, particularly when students are reading about science or other nonfiction texts.
Experts debate why comprehension is worse on screens. Some think the glare and flicker of screens tax the brain more than ink on paper. Others conjecture that students have a tendency to skim online but read with more attention and effort on paper. Digital distraction is an obvious downside to screens. But internet browsing, texting or TikTok breaks aren’t allowed in the controlled conditions of these laboratory studies.
Neuroscientists around the world are trying to peer inside the brain to solve the mystery. Recent studies have begun to document salient differences in brain activity when reading on paper versus screens. None of the studies I discuss below is definitive or perfect, but together they raise interesting questions for future researchers to explore.
One Korean research team documented that young adults had lower concentrations of oxygenated hemoglobin in a section of the brain called the prefrontal cortex when reading on paper compared with screens. The prefrontal cortex is associated with working memory and that could mean the brain is more efficient in absorbing and memorizing new information on paper, according to a study published in January 2024 in the journal Brain Sciences. An experiment in Japan, published in 2020, also noticed less blood flow in the prefrontal cortex when readers were recalling words in a passage that they had read on paper, and more blood flow with screens.
But it’s not clear what that increased blood flow means. The brain needs to be activated in order to learn and one could also argue that the extra brain activation during screen reading could be good for learning.
Instead of looking at blood flow, a team of Israeli scientists analyzed electrical activity in the brains of 6- to 8-year-olds. When the children read on paper, there was more power in high-frequency brainwaves. When the children read from screens, there was more energy in low-frequency bands.
The Israeli scientists interpreted these frequency differences as a sign of better concentration and attention when reading on paper. In their 2023 paper, they noted that attention difficulties and mind wandering have been associated with lower frequency bands – exactly the bands that were elevated during screen reading. However, it was a tiny study of 15 children and the researchers could not confirm whether the children’s minds were actually wandering when they were reading on screens.
Another group of neuroscientists in New York City has also been looking at electrical activity in the brain. But instead of documenting what happens inside the brain while reading, they looked at what happens in the brain just after reading, when students are responding to questions about a text.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE in May 2024, was conducted by neuroscientists at Teachers College, Columbia University, where The Hechinger Report is also based. My news organization is an independent unit of the college, but I am covering this study just like I cover other educational research.
In the study, 59 children, aged 10 to 12, read short passages, half on screens and half on paper. After reading the passage, the children were shown new words, one at a time, and asked whether they were related to the passage they had just read. The children wore stretchy hair nets embedded with electrodes. More than a hundred sensors measured electrical currents inside their brains a split second after each new word was revealed.
For most words, there was no difference in brain activity between screens and paper. There was more positive voltage when the word was obviously related to the text, such as the word “flow” after reading a passage about volcanoes. There was more negative voltage with an unrelated word like “bucket,” which the researchers said was an indication of surprise and additional brain processing. These brainwaves were similar regardless of whether the child had read the passage on paper or on screens.
However, there were stark differences between paper and screens when it came to ambiguous words, ones where you could make a creative argument that the word was tangentially related to the reading passage or just as easily explain why it was unrelated. Take for example, the word “roar” after reading about volcanoes. Children who had read the passage on paper showed more positive voltage, just as they had for clearly related words like “flow.” Yet, those who had read the passage on screens showed more negative activity, just as they had for unrelated words like “bucket.”
For the researchers, the brainwave difference for ambiguous words was a sign that students were engaging in “deeper” reading on paper. According to this theory, the more deeply information is processed, the more associations the brain makes. The electrical activity the neuroscientists detected reveals the traces of these associations and connections.
Despite this indication of deeper reading, the researchers didn’t detect any differences in basic comprehension. The children in this experiment did just as well on a simple comprehension test after reading a passage on paper as they did on screens. The neuroscientists told me that the comprehension test they administered was only to verify that the children had actually read the passage and wasn’t designed to detect deeper reading. I wish, however, the children had been asked to do something involving more analysis to buttress their argument that students had engaged in deeper reading on paper.
Virginia Clinton-Lisell, a reading researcher at the University of North Dakota who was not involved in this study, said she was “skeptical” of its conclusions, in part because the word-association exercise the neuroscientists created hasn’t been validated by outside researchers. Brain activation during a word association exercise may not be proof that we process language more thoroughly or deeply on paper.
One noteworthy result from this experiment is speed. Many reading experts have believed that comprehension is often worse on screens because students are skimming rather than reading. But in the controlled conditions of this laboratory experiment, there were no differences in reading speed: 57 seconds on the laptop compared to 58 seconds on paper – statistically equivalent in a small experiment like this. And so that raises more questions about why the brain is acting differently between the two media.
“I’m not sure why one would process some visual images more deeply than others if the subjects spent similar amounts of time looking at them,” said Timothy Shanahan, a reading research expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
None of this work settles the debate over reading on screens versus paper. All of them ignore the promise of interactive features, such as glossaries and games, which can swing the advantage to electronic texts. Early research can be messy, and that’s a normal part of the scientific process. But so far, the evidence seems to be corroborating conventional reading research that something different is going on when kids log in rather than turn a page.
This story about reading on screens vs. paper was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
Reading on paper involves more physical activity than on a screen. I find that my eyes tend to wander when reading on a screen and at times become very fatigued. If the text is complex then on paper I can use a finger to focus my attention. I am a speed reader when reading print on paper, and slower when reading text online, It maybe an age thing (89) but I am more comfortable holding a book than looking at a screen. My eyes tire quickly when reading on a laptop, ipad or phone. I like to take notes when reading complex material as it helps with retention of material.
I have been a teacher for 30 years. The overwhelmingly majority of my high school students would rather read on paper then on a screen. This applies to schoolwork and when reading books for pleasure. Digital reading “screentime” has a negative effect on our eyes; even with blue light filters. We might not be able to pinpoint a scientific reason for it at this time, but our brains are subconsiously leading the majority of us to prefer paper over screens. This may not be a coincidence….
Having read this article on a screen, there was no discernable difference in comprehension or engagement. I read it through in one sitting just as I might on paper. The headline for the article (just as I’ve seen in many other articles on this topic) purports to offer some proof that reading on paper is better than reading on screens; yet, many of these “studies” suffer from poor design and all have been inconclusive and reek of nostalgia for a medium that is limited in its ability to support comprehension compared to computer-mediated reading.
I prefer reading on a tablet because I can read in low light, adjust the font size, highlight, and take notes right on the screen or with an adjacent app. I’m especially appreciative of the opportunity to use a stylus to annotate texts or take notes freehand or with a glide onscreen keyboard. Of course, most of these things can be done on paper, but with much less convenience and often not without altering the original text.
So far, it seems to be a matter of preference. I prefer reading on a tablet over desktop screens, but I don’t purchase paper books, if I can avoid it. I find the reading much less interactive and I have to deal with storage if this is a work to which I hope to refer in the future.