Reading content on mobile devices: How our brains work

We are still in the early days of fully understanding how we cognitively consume and digest the content that we read on mobile devices. Technology is advancing quickly, but so too is our familiarity with the concept of reading large amounts of content on our phones. The research on the topic reveals some fascinating insights.

Go back fifteen years and most of us only read SMS messages and, possibly for a select few, emails, via our phones; fast forward to today and most of us consume large amounts of content - blog posts, news articles, emails, social media posts, comments, updates, chats, and even entire books - directly on our phones.

How we actually process this information - and how it differs, for example, from reading content in print, or on a desktop, or even on a tablet device, is still something we need to study in more detail.

As well as screen size, the other element that can impact the capacity of a Smartphone is the amount of time users can devote to a device. Phones, unlike our desktops and laptops, are used almost anywhere: which means that when you are using one to read something, you are at a far higher risk of being interrupted as you do so: you might reach your train stop; your partner may ask you a question; or, as is increasingly the case – your Smartphone may interrupt you itself by letting you know you’ve received a new WhatsApp message, Facebook like, Twitter alert or email.

So the attention ‘capacity’ you give over when reading on a mobile device is very different to a desktop. Distractions are everywhere.

As a result, we could surmise that less is more on mobile, then. We can guess this from our own personal experiences as Smartphone users, can’t we? Shorter form content that is easy to read is what hits the spot more often than not. But is this actually true?

Is reading actually impaired by a mobile device?

A 2010 study undertaken by the University of Alberta, claimed it did. The study found that reading comprehension was impaired when content was presented on a mobile-size screen versus a larger computer screen. Why exactly?

The explanation given was rooted in our thought processes. It simply argued that as phone readers reading via a small screen saw less of the text at any one time, they had to rely more on memory to access the information they needed when reading. Or more simply put: readers on mobiles had to use their memories more when reading, due to the nature of the small screen.

But a similar study undertaken six years later and published in December, 2016 showed different results. The study undertaken by the Nielsen Norman Group, of 276 participants, concluded that they found no practical differences in the comprehension scores of the participants, ‘whether they were reading on a mobile device or a computer.’

In fact, the study found comprehension on mobile was about 3 percent higher than on a computer for content that was just over 400 words in length, and at an easier level to read. Why the difference in results?

Could it be that over the last six years we’ve all become more accustomed to reading on smaller screens – and now the challenges the average person had reading on a small screen six years ago are no longer an issue? Possibly. But the answer is we don’t actually know.

The study did find that for longer content - just short of 1,000 words, written to a higher level, comprehension did dip on mobile, suggesting that it may well be that very difficult content is in fact harder to read on mobile than on a computer.

More studies and more research on the topic needs to be undertaken to be sure, but it does raise some fascinating insights.

The above is an extract from my forthcoming book Native Advertising: The Essential Guide, published by Kogan Page. Receive a 20% discount using the code: SMK20 when ordering through Kogan Page, here.