Back to basics: Print over digital

We use our phones most for photos, music, maps, shopping, searching the web, social media and entertainment, perhaps more than even speaking on it!

These figures on the reach and use of digital are hard to beat. And yet, while they may be true, it isn’t just the hours of our attention, but the quality of it, that is in question.

Various studies indicate that in a world of multi-media options, the resilience of print stands out on several fronts.

Take books, for instance. Data gathered from an analysis by the Association of American Publishers in 2022 stated that print books outsell e-books 4:1.

This isn’t a coincidence. It is known that traditional media (print) performs better when it comes to engaging and holding the attention of readers.

First, there are less distractions while reading in print. A screen device offers multiple applications to sift through. A swipe can pull our interest away to random stuff in a moment. (Notice how we pick our phones up to check on a ping, then swipe inadvertently to check an array of social media apps. Notice how what should have been a minute of our time, translates to half hour gone!)

This is a real threat to attention, which in turn directly affects learning and retention of information. Print books, in comparison, keep readers far more absorbed in their singularity of content than a screen device could possibly do. When a book pulls us in, it does so single-handedly.

Subconsciously, too, the brain is better off reading a print book, since the blue light of a screen is an irritant. Free from having to battle it, the brain allows for greater comprehension. The fact that a real book is more tactile also helps, since the reader’s engagement goes beyond just the printed word of the document. A print book is held, felt, and more important, is easy to map. The reader has a sense, at all times, of how much progress s/he has made through it, or with the progress of the plot. An e-book, by comparison, feels like endless sheets on a flat screen, with no scope to map.

Which is why to read long documents attentively, a printed (hard) copy is still the first choice for many.

Interestingly, in the years of the digital boom between 2006-2017, newspaper circulation grew 60% in India. Experts attribute this to the increase in regional language dailies, which in turn were bolstered due to a rise in income and literacy. While the lockdown saw a drop in these numbers, the last couple of years have seen print bounce back.

In the United States, sales of books have soared over the past two years. A survey of Americans by the Pew Research Center between January 2021 and February 2021 indicates that almost 70% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 said they read print books, while 42% said they read e-books.

For United Kingdom book buyers between 13 to 24, print books accounted for 80% of purchases, research from Nielsen BookData found. Gen Z, though screen-obsessed, prefers a real book over e-books because of eye strain. Print offers them a chance to detox digitally. Though e-books are “great for travelling and cheaper”, it feels like a treat to pick and choose a book off the shelf at the local bookstore. Opening it to read “on a couch or beach”, is unmatched, they say.

Newspapers in print score additionally over books on other fronts.

In this age of limitless digital information, time is yet limited. When we read online, we have no sense of how much we have read. There’s too much to go through and we feel constantly pressed for time.

Print selects and curates its news. There is no clutter from an endless stream of information that digital generates, per force of its design. A newspaper as a physical document, is defined. You hold it, and read it. The brain visually maps where articles are placed, aiding memory. Above all, when it is read, it is done. There is a sense of closure. And accomplishment.

It is no surprise then that Facebook (now Meta) launched a print magazine called Grow at the height of the digital curve, or that the Waldorf School of the Peninsula and Lexington, to which most Silicon-valley professionals send their children, offer no screens until grade 9 at least, because they believe that healthy development, social interactions, and inspired learning can best occur without the influence of digital media during the early phases of childhood.

Yet digital is the way we are going, and experts profess that while people may turn to the internet more for quick news, print will have to move to ‘slow’ news, and more analysis. People will turn to print to read longer, more detailed pieces.

That seems plausible. However, consider this. Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Digital is fast becoming the domain of AI. Experts and developers caution that AI, for lack of clarity and legislation, is currently going the way social media agencies did initially – unchecked. 2023 was looked upon as the year of AI’s awakening; 2024 is considered the year of its reckoning. Regulators are grappling with how to shape the technology that, inevitably, is designed to outsmart us. Laws are proposed, and waiting to be debated and passed.

But deep fakes - fake images or videos - are a reality already, among other AI technology. The effects--doctored images of celebrities, politicians, anyone--can create chaos in community, society, politics and national security. Those trained to recognise deep fake images are still grappling with sifting out the real from the unreal. AI is able to transform and fix its flaws faster than we can imagine or keep up with. “We knew a particular image was a deep fake from the hands,” said one sifter. “But a week later, AI had figured how to get the hands right too.”

Will we then, be able to trust what we see on the net? Would not every picture, every audio file, every video and reel, eventually become refutable? Imagine entire profiles, entire sites, our channels of digital communication, our accounts –all open to interference, if not downright hacking and faking. Would what we see, hear, read on the internet, be unequivocally above doubt?

It isn’t improbable.

In which case, we would have to turn back to the basics – to the only realm we can trust for direction - the real world. We would look for credible sources, off the grid. We would have to meet people in person, to know if they exist, and to keep our communication private, to keep our minds sane and calm. For all the people we might reach out to across oceans and continents through a tap on a screen, the bond with those who are physically within reach, would inevitably strengthen. They would know us for who we are and vice-versa.

And for news, print will be the medium of confidence. Print newspapers and agencies, established before the digital boom, will shoot into prominence, once again. Their teams, human, would be of greater value over AI chat and news bots. People who know the news-- how to gather it, sift it, verify it, write and present it --will be whom we would rely on. Our trust would naturally drift (back) to them.

Until then, even as the tide of the digital soars high, we as conscious consumers, can encourage keeping print alive and well. We can choose to be part of that dedicated, smaller reader base, that opens a newspaper to read on a flight, at the metro station, or over coffee, while waiting for a friend or associate. We could allow ourselves a “digital detox” and help make print newspapers profitable, over a longer period of time.

This article is authored by Vandana Kohli, filmmaker, author and entrepreneur, New Delhi.