Why Does Reading Feel Harder Today? How students and professors are responding to changing attention spans

The other night I found myself in bed reading Watchmen, a 1986 comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, as part of the assigned reading for one of my English classes. Because most of my readings are challenging academic articles or books, this was a surprising and welcome change. At U of T, a place I’ve often heard described as a “pressure cooker,” it’s not often you’ll be assigned a comic book for homework. In fact, many U of T students complain about extensive reading lists that leave them feeling overwhelmed. But do we actually get assigned as much reading as we think?

To find out, I spoke to Professor Thom Dancer, the professor who assigned Watchmen. He says U of T’s reading schedules could seem overwhelming to some students because our semesters are relatively short compared to other universities, meaning more reading might be packed into a shorter amount of time. In general though, he doesn’t think the amount of reading has changed. “What seemed like, to me, a reasonable amount of reading 10 years ago, might seem like a lot to students living through this particular state of time,” he explains. “I have not changed the amount of reading that I've assigned since I came here in 2015.”

It’s no secret that attention spans have decreased on average in the age of the internet and social media. Professor Gloria Mark of the University of California Irvine reports that since 2004, attention spans have decreased from an average of 2.5 minutes to 40 seconds. Attention span plays an important role in reading comprehension, a necessary skill for getting through dense academic texts. Although Dancer says he doesn’t necessarily buy into the myth that people don’t read as much as they used to, he does emphasize that it’s becoming a more important skill that less people know how to do well. He says, “the people who can read and read well and understand the different modalities of reading, like quick reading, deep reading, close reading, all those different kinds of reading you're learning here, are going to be more employable than people who are like, ‘I'll just let the internet summarize it for me.’”

There’s little to show that professors have increased the amount of assigned reading over the years, but many are changing the way they teach in response to student reading habits. “I do a lot more stuff now to help students keep up with the reading than I used to do,” says Dancer. “I used to never do reading quizzes. Now I do them because they're a mechanic that helps students stay on top of things. I put more emphasis on talking about reading, how to be an effective reader, how to read long form. These are things I didn't talk about 10 years ago.”

It seems like many students are struggling with the amount of reading they’re assigned, but not because it’s actually an excessive amount, or that professors are piling more and more onto us. In the past two decades, the way we spend our leisure time has changed, and it has in turn changed us and the way we read. We’ve gone from primarily consuming long form content like books and magazines to swiping through an endless stream of short form posts and videos. When that’s what we’re used to, it’s no wonder reading several hundred pages of class material per week feels daunting.

So where do we go from here? While it’s easy to point the finger at social media giants for creating highly addictive products that destroy attention spans, there is also a level of personal responsibility we must take for the way we spend our time and what we give our attention to. Reading for pleasure is a great way to practice reading skills and, in turn, make assigned reading feel more manageable. And despite the pressure of reading assignments, many students do want to read outside of class. But who has time for reading with a full class schedule, extracurriculars, and jobs? Probably you do.

Lately I’ve been hearing the argument that reading is a luxury, but I would argue that reading is one of the most accessible pastimes available to us. The public library is completely free. Even students and people who work full-time jobs have some amount of leisure time, even if it’s not a lot. Making it a habit to read in the moments where you might otherwise scroll on your phone can add up over time. You can read on your commute, with your morning coffee, or for 20 minutes before bed.

Reading dense academic texts is hard, but it’s also part of why we go to university. Dancer explains, “no one wants to practice scales on the piano for six hours a day. That's why they pay a piano instructor, to watch over them, or a coach to make sure you're working on your free throw or whatever it is.” Having professors assign challenging readings and discuss them in class is part of the university experience and how we grow intellectually. But that’s only part of it. A piano teacher can guide you through a piece of music during a lesson, but they can’t come home with you and force you to practice it or enjoy playing the instrument. In the same way, we have to exercise our reading skills independently if we hope to succeed in university courses.