E-Books are Worse than Paper Books

It is a well known fact that tablets, phones, e-books, and other technological equipments are advancing everyday and some of the people that once preferred to read printed books now have change their desire and prefer to read online books. Whether a person prefers to read paper books or prefers to read online books depends on the person’s choice. A book will always be as a gift. The main question is: Are e-books worse than paper books? As we know reading improves our lives in many ways and there are a lot of benefits from the reading. It does not matter whether we are reading an online book or a paper book there will always be benefits from them.

According to an article by Marelisa Fabrega there are more than 13 benefits from reading such as: Reading produces state of flow. This means that when you are reading a book the entire attention is in that book and whatever happens around you, you will not hear regardless of the fact that the book might be printed or online. Another benefit of reading books is reduce of stress, because when you are so “focused” in that book you feel the total “relax” (Lewis, No.D.). This means that relaxing during reading makes you feel more comfortable and unstressed than any other way. Some other benefits are: Gain Knowledge which means that wherever you go you will know different things, Expand your vocabulary, etc.

E-books are harmful for the eyes. Today we are living in a world called digital world, when the relations with the printed media are becoming less common every day and the reading of e-books is being used very much. But do they think about the side effect that digital screen has in their eyes? Can we have healthy eyes even if we stay couple of hours reading in our phones? This is a well known fact that reading e-books is very harmful for the eyes, because they should be read in technological tools such as phones, tablets and these affect the eye strain which printed books do not affect.

According to the studies’ 50-90%’ of the people who spend more than 3 hours in a day reading online will have the symptoms of the decease known as ‘eye strain’, and the main symptoms are: headache, sore eyes, dry, or blurred vision in the eye. Today our watching is focused in the things that are very near us, and their distance is not more than only one meter far. And people’s eyes are not created to watch very close. (D. Hardiman, No.D.).

This means that we should pay attention more to our eyes not only to do things that we like but to think more about our health. Staring in the light screen is not only tiring for your eyes but for the brain as well. Harvard Medical School has concluded that the use of e-books is more “harmful” than the use of paper books, especially in the evening because people who used e-book before their sleep, their sleeping were worse, and in the other day they felt very tired. Whereas people who read a paper book in the evening they felt more relaxed and had a better sleep. The other day they felt happier and had a greater desire to continue reading.

Besides the negative effects that e-books have in our health, E-books also cannot be touched, smelled, or felt. The technology can be improved as much as people want, but the book will still be the most original option of reading. It is real, we touch it, smell it, how many times we want, and without any doubt we can say “I love the smell of new book”. For most of the people reading is more than just sitting, taking a book in their hands and looking in it. It is an emotion and the e-book does not offer it. Reading a book in the phone or tablet make us feel like we are using an ATM.

And after working all day long in your computer, How relaxing can be when you sit and read in your phone for many hours? Do you really comprehend it? ‘75% ‘of the people did not comprehend as much as they want and will be tired a lot. When we recover books in our homes, we do not recover only books but the happiness in our soul and our homes (Vincent Starret, No.D.) and he did not meant collecting electronic books but real books. A real printed book we can keep in our hands whenever we want, how many times we want.

It can be placed in every place, and if we buy a new book everyone will feel the happiness when smelling on it. A real paper book is the one that can stay in our library, indecisive of years, and whenever we read it we will continue learning from it. E-books are depended in many technological factors such as tablets, smart phones, PC, and they work only if you have one of these devices to use them. So the reader has limited battery life and the device should be charged in order to work. If we have technological problems or if they break we will not have the possibility to access to these e-books.

Another advantage that the reader of a physical book has but the reader of e-book does not have is the fully comprehension of the text. Parents should know that reading to their kids is a good thing. From a study that New York Times made in 2013, they concluded that when children in the ages from ‘3 to 5’ years have read in the electronic books the score of reading comprehension were lower than of the children that had to read stories form physical books.

They realized that while reading from devices the children were so distracted from the story and could not fully understand what the message of that story was. This happens because children as well as parents spend more time interacting with the e-book than gathering the focus on explaining and discussing the elements of the story. If in the middle of the reading, happen destroying things such as games, then the e-book does not offer you the same “profits” as a printed book (Pasek, 2013). So according to her on other researchers, a printed book is still a better choice.

On the other hand for the people such as adults, while reading they tend to make relations between what they are reading, what they want to remember and for which parts of the book should take notes. They apply the linking form, book marking, highlighting, annotation, and other things that make their reading more easily comprehendible. These elements help the reader very much especially for remembering. So when we are reading a physical book we can have a pen in our hands and add notes and comments in the margins or directly on it, a feature that cannot happen in e-books although programmers are making attentions to make developments in this field. 

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