Is reading on an e-reader as good as reading on paper?

The paper-versus-screen debate tends to produce two camps: people who think e-readers are the end of civilisation, and people who have read three hundred books on one and are doing fine, thanks. The research sits in between, and it is more specific than either camp.

What the research found

The biggest summary of the evidence is a 2018 meta-analysis by Pablo Delgado and colleagues in Educational Research Review, which pulled together studies from 2000 to 2017 comparing comparable texts read on paper and on digital devices. According to the published abstract, the studies involved more than 170,000 participants, and overall readers understood texts somewhat better on paper. Three details matter more than the headline:

• Time pressure made the gap bigger. When people read at their own pace, the paper advantage was smaller than when they were racing a clock.
• Story texts were different. The paper advantage held for informational texts and mixed texts, but not in studies that used only narrative texts.
• The gap grew over the years covered, rather than shrinking as people got used to screens.

Note that "digital devices" in these studies includes computers and tablets, not only e-ink e-readers.

A more targeted study, published by Anne Mangen and colleagues in Frontiers in Psychology in 2019, gave fifty young adults a long mystery story to read either on a Kindle or in a paperback laid out to match it. On most tests the two groups performed the same, including engagement and recall. But the paperback readers did better on questions about chronology: when things happened and in what order. The authors suggest the physical feel of a book's thickness and page position helps readers map where they are in a story.

What that means in practice

For novels and pleasure reading, the evidence gives you little reason to worry. Read on whatever gets you reading more. If you sometimes lose track of who did what when in a long plot, a paper copy, or simply flicking back more often, can help.

For study, work documents and non-fiction you need to master, paper has a real edge, especially if you are reading against a deadline. Print the report. Buy the textbook in paper if you can, or at least slow down on screen.

For skimming, be honest. A lot of screen reading is skimming because the device invites it. The scholar Maryanne Wolf builds a whole book, Reader, Come Home (2018), around this worry: written as a series of letters, it asks what happens to deep, slow reading in a world of constant distraction, and proposes that we learn to be good at both modes. Its description at Stanford's CASBS calls that goal a biliterate reading brain.

The practical pros and cons

E-reader wins: a whole holiday library in one light object, adjustable text size, built-in dictionary, reading in the dark without a lamp, cheaper or free classics, and borrowing ebooks from many libraries.

Paper wins: no battery, no notifications, a physical sense of where you are in the book, easy flicking back and forth, margins to write in, books to lend, and shelves that remind you what you have read.

How to mix the two

• Keep the e-reader for travel, long series and late-night reading.
• Use paper for books you want to study, annotate or reread.
• If an ebook turns out to matter to you, buy it on paper later; second-hand copies make this cheap.
• Whatever the format, turn off the notifications on any device you read on.