There's
new reason to believe so-called "digital natives" really do think
differently in response to technology: It may be "priming" them to
think more concretely and remember details rather than the big picture when
they work on a screen. Among young adults who regularly use smartphones
and tablets, just reading a story or performing a task on a screen instead
of on paper led to greater focus on concrete details, but less ability to infer
meaning or quickly get the gist of a problem, found a series of experiments. Using
a digital format can develop a "mental 'habit' of triggering a more
detail-focused mindset, one that prioritizes processing local, immediate
information rather than considering more abstract, decontextualized
interpretations of information.
Flanagan, M., & Kaufman, G.
(2016). High-Low Split: Divergent Cognitive Construal Levels
Triggered by Digital and Non-digital Platforms. CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems.
