Psychology says people who read on screens rather than paper may remember information with fewer physical clues to guide them

Reading on a phone, laptop or tablet has become so normal that most people probably do not think twice about it. News, study material, work documents and even books are now often read from a glowing screen instead of a printed page. But psychology and reading research suggests that the medium itself may have some effect on how well information is understood and remembered.

The difference does not mean that everything read digitally is forgotten. In many situations, people understand screen-based text just fine. But studies comparing digital and paper reading have repeatedly found a small advantage for printed material, particularly when the text is longer, more complicated or has to be read quickly.

Paper gives the brain more physical clues

One possible reason has to do with something very simple: where the information is physically located.


In a printed book, a paragraph stays in one place. Readers can remember that an important point appeared near the bottom of a left-hand page, or that another detail was several pages earlier. The physical shape and position of the material can become part of the reading experience.

A screen does not provide the same kind of fixed physical map. Text moves, pages disappear after scrolling and the reader may have little sense of where a particular piece of information was located.

Research reviewed by Pablo Delgado, Cristina Vargas, Rakefet Ackerman and Ladislao Salmerón found that paper reading produced better comprehension than digital reading overall. Their 2018 meta-analysis examined 54 studies involving 171,055 participants and found a small but consistent advantage for paper.

The researchers also found that the difference became more noticeable when people were reading under time pressure.

Screens can encourage faster, shallower reading

Another explanation is linked to the way people normally use digital devices.

Online reading often involves jumping between headlines, messages, links, short articles and social media posts. Readers become used to quickly deciding what deserves attention and what can be skipped.

Marte Blikstad-Balas, a professor at the University of Oslo, has studied this issue in school settings. In one study, eighth-grade students read sections about a walrus and a beetle either on paper or a screen while wearing eye-tracking glasses.

Students reading from screens tended to move through the material faster and skim more. Their reading comprehension was also lower, while their returns to earlier parts of the text increased.

“What we saw, and this is very much in line with other research, was that when the students read in the digital condition, they tended to read faster and do more skim reading,” Blikstad-Balas says.

Interestingly, the students themselves did not appear to notice much difference. They believed they performed similarly in both conditions, even though researchers observed more difficulty during screen reading.

The difference is small but may matter over time

The effect should not be exaggerated. Ladislao Salmerón, who studies how digitization changes reading, noted that the difference can be quite small in an individual test.

“If it’s a 10-question test, we’ve found the difference would be something like half of a question,” Salmerón says.

Still, repeated small differences could matter because reading ability develops over years. A 2023 systematic review by Igor Peras and colleagues also found mixed results across studies involving students aged 6 to 18, with some finding no meaningful difference and others reporting poorer comprehension from screens.

The researchers pointed to factors such as previous reading ability, reading habits, family resources and school technology use as things that can influence the outcome.

It does not mean screens are always worse

The research is not saying that people should stop reading digitally. Digital reading is convenient, cheap and gives people access to an enormous amount of information.

The type of material also matters. Research suggests that the screen disadvantage can be smaller when people are reading narrative material, such as a novel, than when they are working through informational or explanatory text.

So the issue may be less about screens being automatically bad and more about how people use them. For a quick article or message, skimming may be perfectly adequate. For studying a difficult chapter, learning new material or trying to remember details, slowing down and reading carefully may make a bigger difference.

As Salmerón puts it, “Reading ability is cumulative and develops through the whole life cycle.”

That is perhaps the more useful takeaway. A screen can put the same words in front of us, but the physical clues, reading habits and pace surrounding those words can still change how deeply we process them.