Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

Is technology ruining literature for us? Different pieces of data conflict on this question. For example, sales of print books have increased in the past 25 years, whereas fewer Americans read for pleasure than before.

More broadly, we readers face a conflict between the instant gratification the internet affords and the more fulfilling pleasures cultivated by the act of reading. Amazon stands out as an enabler of instant gratification applied directly to reading.

When, if ever, did people read well? As far back as the eighteenth century, readers read “intensively,” when there were less distractions, less books were available, and it was common practice to re-read titles. Now we read “extensively” — that is, we tend to read books once and move on.

Writing in 1994, author Sven Birkerts feared modernity generally (and the internet specifically) would cheapen our experience of literature. He prized the “vertical” act of deep reading and warned of a bleak future where connective technologies distract and cause us to read “horizontally,” less for depth than for breadth.

So then why do we read today? Maybe the internet is making us lonelier. Today we ingest social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) like we might skim receipts — a fragmentary kind of reading. Meanwhile it’s still possible to escape distractions like the internet by the practice of deep reading.

The author of the piece claims that through reading we seek communion not with others but with ourselves. Further, books still resonate with us on an individual plane, she argues, because the pleasure we seek in books is whole and self-contained, like a happy childhood memory.