By Dan Levengood, Senior Product Specialist
There is an article in the latest issue of The Atlantic titled, “Is Google Makings us Stupid?” It’s an excellent read. The article points out various ways Google is changing how we learn, read, research and digest information. Good stuff. However, I think they give Google too much credit.
We don’t read, we scan
If you haven’t noticed, you don’t really read Web pages. You scan them. You can blame scanning on the Internet’s ability to give us immediate access to the world’s information, and Google for indexing the information.
Scanning in place of actual reading has brought about a fundamental change in the way we write. It has also changed the way we learn. We aren’t getting stupid; we’re simply processing information much more efficiently.
Why? Immediate access and Google
Immediate access is the number one culprit to this general lack of reading. On any given Web page, a user has hundreds, even thousands* of opportunities to navigate away from the page with just one click. (*Think about it; links in the page content, links around the page content, navigation on the page, your back button, toolbars, multiple open tabs/Windows, bookmarks, etc.)
Google certainly has something to do with this change. Google added to the immediate access theory by revolutionizing search engine indexing. It’s easy to search for something; simply click the first result, scan the page, and hit your back button to return to explore the other 10,000 results.
Google also tempts us to “google” anything we want, at any time, by simply typing an idea into their free Web browser search toolbars. The toolbar, only a few inches away at any moment, makes it easy for a user to have immediate access, at their fingertips, to billions of pages of information.
Writing efficiently
Once Webmasters figured out they only had a few moments to prove to the user that they are on the correct page, they started to change the way they wrote. The main objective of this change was to write as efficiently and broad-based as possible, capturing the reader’s attention instantly. Gone is the fluff and extra words. They get to the point ASAP. Just mention bounce rate to a Webmaster and watch him/her cringe!
To capture a user’s attention, the experts settled on some of the following techniques:
- Always use numbered/ordered/bulleted lists (like the one you’re reading now)
- Write meaningful headers/sub-headers
- Cut word count in half from printed text
- Structure ideas using the inverted pyramid style
- Use hypertext to bold words, drawing attention to them
A new, smart, reader is born
Now that we have billions of efficient, keyword stuffed, intelligently headlined, indexed (via hypertext) pages on the Interwebs, we also have a new breed of readers. These new readers have short attention spans, are short on time, hate stale information, and demand well-written content.
No need to learn how to speed read, or buy the Cliff Notes version. Information on the Web is already being presented to you as concise and condensed as possible.
Remember, you’re not getting dumb because you no longer order books on Amazon or go to the local library on a weekly basis, or get back to read that bookmarked link from six months ago.
You’ve actually gotten wiser. You’ve realized that you can read more information, efficiently, on the Web.
