At their best, videos are a great source of information. They let you see events and look at the faces of people advancing their aims. But when it comes to analyzing and evaluating an issue, they’re a poor substitute for text. With the decline in reading by Americans, this is a serious concern.
The shift from large screens and paper materials to phones helps to explain the popularity of videos. It’s hard to read text on a pocket-sized screen. People often listen to videos more than they watch them. Or they half-listen while doing other things. This isn’t good for developing informed opinions.
When you read a text, you have to give it a certain amount of attention. You can pause when something is questionable and re-read it to decide if it makes sense. You can leave it long enough to check another source. You can use a bookmark, either physical or electronic, to mark something you want to come back to.
Video has advantages, but it falls short as a source of in-depth understanding. It’s too easy to absorb it rather than listen critically. Irrelevant factors such as quality of delivery can affect the viewer’s evaluation. It’s a less efficient way of conveying information; someone with decent reading skills can go through a text in a fraction of the time it takes to hear it read.
I wonder what happens when people constantly listen to claims while not really paying attention. It makes sense to me that some of them would internalize the claims. The “illusory truth effect” theory holds that when people hear something repeatedly, they tend to believe it. This has to be especially true when they don’t stop to question it. An extreme case is Alex Jones, who has gotten a lot of people to believe his bizarre claims. I don’t have hard data, but the effect on the population has to be significant. It goes a long way to explain the acceptance of crazy ideas on the left and right.
Since this is a written article, you can argue I’m preaching to the choir. How do we get the people who only watch videos to start reading again? I don’t know.