Reading in the Digital Age: The Impact of Using Digital Devices on Children’s Reading, Writing and Thinking Skills

In the digital age, face-to-face communication is increasingly being supplemented, and in some cases even replaced, by computer-mediated communication. We interact less with each other directly but more through social media and other electronic platforms. New words and symbols are invented and syntax is modified to accommodate these needs, and these spread quickly through the virtual media. In schools and at home, children are being exposed to electronic learning since a young age and knowledge acquisition is based on not just printed books but also electronic sources and internet contents. They handwrite less but type more, read less printed but more digital books, spell less but use more speech recognition engines to convert voice commands to text. Impaired readers may benefit from the audiobooks, and likewise dysgraphic children may write more by typewriting. How do the ever increasing exposure to electronic devices and the overwhelmingly rich information available on the internet affect children’s reading, writing and thinking skills?

This Frontiers Research Topic aims at understanding how the use of electronic devises has changed children’s reading, writing and thinking skills. We welcome contributions from researchers in linguistics, psychology, education, neuroscience and related fields, whose work examines closely the impact of the use of digital devices on
1) language structure,
2) language functions and development,
3) cognitive and brain functions and development.