You probably read a lot onscreen—posting and responding to updates in your social networks, browsing websites, and so on. Onscreen reading is often social and collaborative, allowing you to connect with others and discuss what you’ve read.

In addition to changing reading from a solitary to a group activity, digital reading can be useful for finding information quickly. Research suggests that digital readers tend to take shortcuts, scanning and skimming and jumping from link to link. Because screen reading can help you find content that relates to what you’re looking for, it can be a powerful tool that you can use effectively in your college work.

But students tell researchers that they prefer to read print texts when the reading needs to be absorbed and remembered. Like many students, you may find it easier to navigate and be in control of a print text—you know where you are, how much you have read, and how much you have left to read; you can easily flip back and forth looking for something. Reading on the Internet can often be distracting, and reading onscreen for long periods can be tiring. Psychologists also find that students reading onscreen do less “metacognitive learning”—that is, learning that reflects on what has been learned and makes connections—than readers of print texts do. So print still holds some advantages for readers.

If you have a choice of media when you’re asked to read a text, consider whether reading onscreen or in print will work better for your purposes. If you read a complex text onscreen rather than in print, try harder than usual to focus. Get in the habit of previewing, annotating, summarizing, and analyzing to ensure that you’re making appropriate connections, whether you’re reading a printed page or a digital text.

Tutorial: Active reading strategies