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Podcasts and TikToks are reviving oral culture, making information easy to follow but less mentally demanding. Neuroscience shows that reading still trains focus, comprehension, and complex thinking far better than listening alone.
The Problem With Learning From Podcasts, According to Neuroscience
Author: Jessica Stillman
Imagine a group of people sitting around listening to a storyteller recite tales of heroes, villains, and daring exploits. This sounds like a scene from the deep human past. But according to a variety of experts, the present resembles distant history more than many of us realize.
When you choose to get your information mostly from podcasts and short videos, you’re participating in this revival of oral culture, they argue. What’s that doing to our society? To your brain? Neuroscientists and scholars warn it’s complicated.
The return of oral culture?
TikTok and podcasts might seem like a far cry from sitting around a campfire or crowded tavern being entertained by the local bard. But since the dawn of digital media, thinkers have pointed out similarities.
Way back in the 1980s Jesuit priest and literature professor Walter Ong argued that radio and television were reviving “oral culture.” Magazine editor Tina Brown echoed the prediction in 2013. More recently media theorist Andrey Mir, historian Adam Garfinkle, and culture writer Katherine Dee have all made similar claims.
Vox’s Eric Levitz has written a detailed explanation of these arguments. But the basic story goes like this. When people mostly rely on listening, information must be memorable. That usually means simple and repetitive. Ideas are often linked to specific people and social contexts.
The advent of mass literacy allowed people to have more abstract, complex thoughts. The written word separated ideas from the person presenting them. This, neuroscientists tell us, leaves observable changes in how our brains are wired.
Social media, YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts are reversing these changes, the argument goes.
“Digital media revives oral culture by enabling humans to communicate through speech and facial expressions,” Levitz sums up. As a result, “our thinking is becoming less abstract and more narrowly practical; less rational and more emotive; less universalistic and more tribal; less individualistic and more conformist.”
Shifting from reading to listening
There is plenty to debate about this theory. Is oral culture objectively linked with a particular thinking style? Given that almost all of us can read today, are we really returning to whatever this mode of thought might be? Did digital media revive a particular mindset or just make it more visible and powerful?
These questions are fascinating, and hotly contested. When it comes to the effects on individual brains of shifting from reading to listening, we are on firmer ground, however.
It is a simple fact that people are reading a lot less these days (especially if you mean deep, engaged reading rather than just skimming texts). Teachers of all stripes are complaining about students’ declining willingness and ability to read books.
And neuroscience is clear that the way your brain grapples with text is very different from how it handles spoken words.
Your brain on books vs. podcasts
What’s it doing to your brain if you move from getting your information mostly from books and articles to getting it mostly from podcasts and videos? Stephanie Del Tufo, who researches the neuroscience of language, recently explained on The Conversation.
“Your brain uses some of the same language and cognitive systems for both reading and listening, but it also performs different functions depending on how you’re taking in the information,” she writes.
For instance, reading requires a multistep decoding process to transform letters into words into sentences and eventually whole ideas. As you can’t control the flow of information, listening demands concentration and memory.
When it comes to enjoying simple material for pleasure, these differences aren’t important. Access your vampire romance or sports banter in any form you prefer. But when you’re trying to engage with complicated ideas or learn from the material, reading rather than listening has advantages. (Note that this doesn’t apply if you have dyslexia.)
“Reading difficult material tends to be easier than listening from a practical standpoint,” Del Tufo points out. “Reading lets you move around within the text easily, rereading particular sections if you’re struggling to understand, or underlining important points to revisit later. A listener who is having trouble following a particular point must pause and rewind, which is less precise than scanning a page and can interrupt the flow of listening, impeding understanding.”
It is also often easier to maintain your focus when reading, which demands your full attention. Podcasts offer more opportunities for multitasking and therefore distraction.
Which is likely why, “when researchers asked college students to either read or listen to a podcast on their own time, students who read the material performed significantly better on a quiz than those who listened,” Del Tufo reports.
Reading beats podcasts for learning.
Over time, neuroscientists tell us, deep reading trains our brains for concentration and complex thought. What it means for us as a society if we opt out of exercising those skills and choose to get most of our information orally instead is up for debate.
But science is clear that, for individuals, how you get your information matters. Listening might be easier to fit into a busy life. Podcasts and videos can be brilliant, hilarious, or inventive.
When it comes to engaging with and remembering complex material though, listening really can’t replace cracking an old-fashioned book.
Credits: TCA, LLC.