That's entertainment, folks

When everybody was binge-watching, I went against the trend and blogged that binge-watching or binge-reading might be entertaining for the moment but doesn't do a damn thing for memory recall.  Only one person actually listened to me.  Compared to the zero impacts that I usually have, one person is a huge success ;)

Now, the trend is all about listening to podcasts and audiobooks.  People listen to them when walking or driving, or even when gardening maybe.  Audio and video can feel more engaging than text, but doesn't measure up to the good ol' reading:

The collective research shows that digital media have common features and user practices that can constrain learning. These include diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset, a propensity to multitask, lack of a fixed physical reference point, reduced use of annotation and less frequent reviewing of what has been read, heard or viewed.

It is bloody entertainment, that's all it is!  Podcasts and audiobooks are ways to spend one's time.  A few days later, the brain remembers nothing, and meanwhile it is processing newer podcasts and audiobooks.

But then, perhaps you are thinking that not all people learn the old-fashioned way.  Some work only with visual or auditory materials.  Ahem, in that case, you may want to re-read this post from April 2018. (Of course, I am referring to individuals without visual or auditory disabilities.)

It is not the mere memory recall that worries me.  I don't care about memory recall, especially in the age of Google and Siri and more to come.  We can always pull up the information.  But, we won't be able to do that unless we have an idea of what we are looking for.  We won't be able to figure out what to look for unless we have built our capacity through continuous rigorous learning.

What concerns me more is when I project all these into the future.  If the trends continue and there is less rigorous interaction with information of many kinds, will we end up with an overwhelming majority of the population that might be functionally literate but nothing beyond that?  Engaging with information is hard work, and if people do not want to do that ...