Writer’s Blog 1
The concept of how digital writing has affected our current literacy practices intrigued me. It is not often that I sit down and think about that, so once I did, I had many thoughts about this. The first effect I thought about was our attention spans. The use of digital media and writing has shortened our attention spans. We skip over lengthy stories even if they have genuine, important content. We skip right to the articles that have short, attention grabbing headlines. Even in the content we watch in the media our attention spans have been shortened. We have gone from movies to shows to youtube videos to 15 second tik toks due to our attention span. The quick, easy access to information, news, writings, and more through digital media has caused us to crave that quick news rather than consuming a longer piece of media.
The next effect digital writing has had on our literacy practices that I thought about was our shift from paper to technology. Rather than getting our news from newspapers everyday, our focus shifted to watching the news on TV. After that. it then shifted from the TV to our mobile devices. We can easily read news articles at the click of a button. We have endless headlines to scroll through if one does not immediately catch our eye. Even in reading books and stories we have transitioned to technology as well. We now use kindles, tablets, and phones instead of paper copies of these books and writings. I personally prefer paper books over these digital versions. Reading a paper book feels more real to me. While I prefer these paper books, I would prefer short writings, news, and articles digitally.
Another effect digital writing has brought to us is the ability to interact. We are able to interact with both the author as well as other readers. This allows us to hear others’ opinions on what he have read. Hearing other opinions can either strengthen our own opinions, influence what we think, or cause us to ask questions about both opinions. These interactions can lead to deep thoughts and topics that you might not have gotten to without that digital communication. Having these comment sections available for interaction also allows readers to directly interact with the author. This allows for clarification of the text, more answers the text did not provide, or background on the piece you have read.
Questions like ‘How has digital media and writing changed current literacy practices?’ allow us to think deeper in tasks we do every single day. I mindlessly scroll on these digital media writings without thinking about what it replaced. I enjoy questions like these because I normally would not think about the influence digital media has on writing. Once the question was prompted to me, I found that I had many thoughts on this topic. With these questions I am able to think deeper and more clearly understand the effects things such as writing digitally has on the world.
