PDF Summary:Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf

The way we read is fundamentally changing in our increasingly digital world. What does this mean for our brains?

In Proust and the Squid, cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf explores how humans invented reading and how reading, in turn, shaped human civilization. She writes that we weren't born to read; rather, our brains rewired themselves to develop this uniquely human skill. And today, she says, the transition from pages to screens is changing how we read and may threaten the deep reading skills that foster critical thinking and empathy.

But Wolf doesn’t reject technology. Instead, she argues that we should develop both traditional deep reading skills and new forms of digital literacy. This guide will cover the history of reading (and writing), how children learn to read, and what the future of reading might hold in our digital age. Our commentary connects Wolf’s insights to recent research on how technology is changing our brains, how best to teach literacy, and how to adapt to our digital world.

(continued)...

During later childhood, children begin to read with greater ease. Having memorized enough words to follow and enjoy what she reads, the young reader begins to grasp the multiple possible meanings of words in different contexts (like how “fly” can mean the bug or what that bug does to zip around in the air, and “zip” can describe that bug’s motion or what you do to close your pants).

(Shortform note: Children who grow up in bilingual environments may be better at navigating ambiguities like the multiple meanings of a word. One study of Greek-Albanian bilingual children ages 10-12 found that whether they understood words with multiple meanings depended on several factors: how frequently they encountered each meaning, the context surrounding each word, and the size of their working memory (how many words and meanings they could keep in mind). Children who could read and write in both languages were better at dealing with ambiguous words.)

Throughout adolescence and beyond, readers develop more advanced cognitive and critical thinking skills. By this point, the reader learns to recognize literary devices, like metaphor and irony. She’ll also form increasingly sophisticated personal connections to what she reads—like seeing her own qualities in a protagonist, recognizing lessons from a book that she’s experienced in her own life, or developing preferences for different styles and genres of writing.

(Shortform note: These more advanced literacy skills might come in part from “Theory of Mind” (ToM)—our ability to understand others’ mental states, beliefs, and intentions. At around 15 to 16 years old, teenagers’ ToM abilities get much stronger. This could help explain why teenagers better understand literary devices like unreliable narrators, complex character motivations, and subtle forms of irony. For example, a 9-year-old might struggle to understand why in The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist says one thing but means another. But a teenager’s more developed Theory of Mind helps them recognize and understand this unreliable narrator.)

Throughout these stages, reading actively shapes the reader’s brain. As the child reads and grows, her brain develops increasingly sophisticated circuits for processing written language. Eventually, she becomes a fluent, literate, adult reader.

However, Wolf emphasizes that this development isn’t automatic—it requires the right conditions and support. Children need exposure to books, explicit instruction in reading skills, and opportunities to practice. Environmental factors like poverty or limited access to books can make it much harder for children to learn to read, and this can have a devastating effect: Some children hear millions fewer words than their peers by age five, and this can slow their growth as readers for years.

(Shortform note: Wolf bases her argument on an oft-cited study that found that children from lower socioeconomic classes hear 30 million fewer words by age three. However, more recent research suggests this gap is overstated. For one, a 2017 study that involved nearly eight times more families than the original 1992 research found a gap of only four million words by age four. Other studies have failed to replicate the original findings (and replicability is a mark of strong research). Also, some researchers have shown that language exposure varies dramatically across communities in ways that aren’t straightforwardly tied to income. Wolf is still right that we should support young readers—but the solution may not be as simple as compensating for disparities in words heard in childhood.)

Reading and Intellectual Life

According to Wolf, people who read throughout their lives are changed by what they read—that is, deep engagement with good writing (like books) influences how we think and who we become.

This is because reading allows us to share in the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others—in other words, to develop empathy. Authors leave behind a permanent impression of themselves, which rubs off on whoever reads their work. Wolf says this is positive: It expands our lives to include diverse experiences we could never have had, and it teaches us more about the people around us and the world we share with them.

Beyond developing our empathy, lifelong reading also keeps us sharp. It gives us continued opportunities to think critically, analyze and learn from texts, draw connections to our own lives, and more. All of this, Wolf writes, contributes to our positive intellectual development.

Reading: Classical Education and Literary Fiction

Wolf’s argument that deep reading helps us develop both our empathy and our intellect isn’t new. Historically, Western educators taught a “classical” curriculum of liberal arts that aimed to develop well-rounded people who could think well, communicate clearly, persuade others, and act effectively in the world.

A classical liberal arts curriculum followed the trivium (arts of the word) and quadrivium (arts of the number), which presented sequences of texts as stepping stones in intellectual and moral development. For instance, the classical trivium taught grammar (the patterns and structures of a topic, like language or painting), logic (thinking critically about these topics), and rhetoric (speaking persuasively). This progression taught a foundation of key thinking and emotional skills.

Modern studies also suggest that fiction-reading offers unique benefits. Specifically, reading literary fiction has been shown to enhance the aforementioned Theory of Mind in ways that nonfiction and popular fiction don’t. This supports Wolf’s assertion that reading positively supports our mental and intellectual development—and it suggests that some types of reading may be better for this than others.

How Children with Dyslexia Learn to Read

Not all children learn to read without difficulty. Wolf writes that dyslexia, the most common source of reading difficulties, is a complex condition with no single, clear cause. Instead, it results from a breakdown in one or more of the many circuits that make up the reading brain. For instance, it might manifest as difficulty connecting letters to sounds (such as b and “buh”) or trouble forming memories of words to enable fluent reading.

Since dyslexia isn’t a single condition but rather a spectrum of reading difficulties, it calls for varied solutions, too. Wolf says that reading support tailored to the specific difficulty a reader faces can change the course of the brain’s development, creating more efficient neural pathways and potentially mitigating dyslexia’s downsides.

(Shortform note: Some educators agree with Wolf, suggesting specific strategies for each of the common difficulties kids can run into in the classroom. For instance, a student struggling to understand a reading assignment might be given extra time and an audiobook to help him read. Or, a student who finds spelling difficult might be allowed to use a computer with spellcheck for assignments. There are also long-established methods like the Orton-Gillingham approach, which use structured, phonics-based interventions. The Orton-Gillingham approach uses listening, speaking, seeing, and writing to help students acquire the fundamentals of reading and writing.)

The goal of reading interventions isn’t to “cure” dyslexia—in fact, Wolf says that dyslexia is better thought of not as an illness but as a different organization of the brain that comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. Brain imaging shows that while people with dyslexia have weaker circuits for typical reading development, they often have stronger circuits for visual and spatial thinking, which help with creativity, problem-solving, and big-picture inventiveness.

Strengths-Based Perspectives on Dyslexia

While she doesn’t use the term, Wolf’s view of dyslexia embraces the notion of neurodiversity. Coined in the 1990s by autistic sociologist Judy Singer, neurodiversity sees different organizations of the brain (like autism or ADHD) as natural variations rather than deficits. This challenged the dominant medical model, which approached cognitive differences primarily as disorders to be treated or cured, and it helped to normalize the view that neurodiverse people aren’t sick—they just experience the world differently. The neurodiversity framework has since expanded to include dyslexia.

A 2022 study of dyslexia corroborates Wolf’s argument that people with dyslexia have unique strengths. In fact, the study’s researchers argue that dyslexia is best understood as an evolutionary adaptation—a trait, rather than a disability or disease. They point to the fact that dyslexia is common (occurring in 5% to 20% of people) and is genetically inherited, so it was probably selected for by evolution. We’ve historically focused on its disadvantages, but not its key advantage: an ability the researchers call “explorative search.” By this, they mean that dyslexic individuals’ brains are tuned for the sort of creative, big-picture, spatial reasoning that Wolf mentions.

Part 3: Reading and the Digital Age

The brain evolved over millennia to read and write, and each of us becomes literate over many years. But literacy is at risk, Wolf says—in the digital age, the nature of reading has changed and it’s changing our brains, too. In this section, we’ll cover what these changes are and how Wolf recommends we handle the shift from traditional to digital reading and writing.

From Speech to Page to Screen

To illustrate the nature of this shift from written to digital literacy, Wolf calls back to ancient Greece. When the Greek alphabet began to spread, Socrates argued that reading and writing would weaken the distinct cognitive skills that oral culture encouraged. He thought that dead words on a page couldn’t support proper thinking and the pursuit of knowledge as well as live oral communication did.

In other words, Socrates felt that literacy would change the way people thought. Though he focused on the potential negatives, he had the right idea: What we do changes the brain (neuroplasticity), so different ways of using language develop different abilities in us.

(Shortform note: In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan makes a similar argument about how information formats affect us. He writes that different forms of media influence our beliefs and attitudes—shaping how we think, feel, and act on a pre-conscious level. Writing around the time mass media first arose (mainly as television and radio), McLuhan says that “the medium is the message:” The way you receive information can be more important than the information itself. For instance, you’d experience a banquet scene differently if you saw it in an online ad versus a movie. You’d be more indifferent to the scene in the ad, whereas you’d be more emotionally involved in the movie scene.)

While Socrates was right that literacy would bring changes, he didn’t foresee its upsides. According to Wolf, literacy allowed humankind to develop a whole new range of cognitive skills. No longer needing to memorize everything we might want to think about, we could go beyond the thoughts we’d been able to think before—studies show that writing things down frees your mind up to think further ahead. This increased cognitive freedom gave us time to think more deeply, more critically, and more empathetically. It gave rise to the traditions of literature, scholarship, and intellectual rigor that we carry on today.

Our brains will change again as we shift from traditional reading and writing to digital, online reading and writing. And Wolf writes that if we mismanage this shift, we could lose the rich inheritance of thinking skills that traditional literacy gave us.

(Shortform note: How we think and communicate affects not just our brains but our cultures, too. In oral cultures, knowledge is fluid, communal, and performative—preserved through epic poems, storytelling, and communal memory. When literacy developed and some cultures moved away from oral traditions, people pursued knowledge in a more personal manner, such as by doing their own reading and writing. This contributed to individualism in these cultures. In our shift to digital culture, we’re changing again to become both highly individualized and highly interconnected. We each live in a world of personal, algorithmic information feeds that shape us—and also tap us into cultural niches and movements we might never have found otherwise.)

The Screen: Upsides and Downsides

How will the digital age change our brains and our thinking skills? Wolf isn’t quite sure, but she writes about both potential upsides and downsides.

Discussing upsides, Wolf writes that digital reading could promote strong associative thinking—the ability to make connections across many topics or themes. She also says that digital mediums offer accessibility features, like adjustable text size, read-aloud options, customized learning support, and interactive engagement with texts—things not possible with an inert, physical book.

(Shortform note: Digital reading isn’t the only way to cultivate associative thinking. In Mastery, Robert Greene argues that although we tend to become more rigid in our thinking as we age, we can practice to stay mentally limber. He recommends allowing for uncertainty and stimulating chance associations by embracing downtime—for instance, you might take a long walk to get some time alone with your thoughts. Used alongside accessibility features like those Wolf mentions above, these practices can help you stay sharp as you read online.)

Despite these potential upsides, Wolf worries that digital reading could have major downsides. Because the internet lets you quickly scan and bounce among many different streams of information, it conditions you to think in a different way. Moving swiftly from article to article or tweet to tweet, you take things in less deeply but more broadly. Able to access most any piece of information almost immediately, you don’t stop as long to think or engage as critically with it.

(Shortform note: Where does the densely connected structure of the internet come from? It has its origins in the ideas of Ted Nelson and other early computing pioneers. In his 1965 paper “Complex Information Processing,” Nelson describes “hypertext,” or computer documents connected by what he called “hyperlinks,” those blue links we’re all familiar with. Nelson and others envisioned the internet as a nearly utopian technology, but it’s had unforeseen consequences. One, as Wolf says, is that when we multitask online—interacting with multiple pages or elements on a page—we divide our attention and don’t absorb information as deeply. In this way, internet use can diminish your critical thinking skills.)

Given that the internet encourages you to skim and bounce around quickly, Wolf says it might have these negative effects:

• Decreased attention span (trouble sticking with one thing, like a book)
• Less capacity for analytical thinking—it becomes harder to think critically about the ideas in a text. For instance, you might struggle to understand an author’s argument (about, say, the merits of veganism), assess its soundness, and decide whether you agree.
• Less empathy—it gets harder to take other perspectives, relate deeply to an author’s ideas, and pick up on the meaning and emotion in what you read.

These skills are precisely those that humankind developed through traditional literacy. To preserve them, we have to make sure we don’t abandon deeper, slower, offline reading and writing altogether.

(Shortform note: Some research suggests Wolf’s concerns are well-founded. One study found that human attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8.25 seconds, or shorter than a goldfish’s. Another shows that young people are neither thinking critically nor reading for pleasure as much as they used to. Lastly, some experts had begun arguing as early as 2011 that the internet is reducing our empathy for one another—though other research finds that some forms of internet use, like social networking, can increase empathy.)

The Page and the Screen Can Coexist

Despite the downsides, Wolf doesn’t reject digital reading altogether. She suggests instead that we develop the capacity to effectively switch between slow, deep, traditional reading and quick, surface-level, online reading.

Wolf recommends specific ways that parents and educators can help their children achieve this balance. First, parents should continue reading physical books with children and help them establish dedicated time for deep, traditional reading.

(Shortform note: Experts recommend a few easy ways to help kids develop a love of reading. For one, you can set up a cozy space, like a reading nook, which can help make reading more relaxing. You might also choose a specific time to read to your kids, like before bed. Additionally, lead by example by reading regularly yourself—and by shutting off the TV or putting down your phone. This sends the message that reading is its own form of enjoyment, and that it can be as good or better than screen-based entertainment.)

Wolf says that meanwhile, educators need to teach explicit strategies for both digital and traditional reading, helping students recognize when each type of reading is appropriate and developing exercises that build deep reading skills.

(Shortform note: Perhaps in response to concerns like Wolf’s, some educators have begun to teach “critical digital literacy.” This approach involves teaching what’s been called “online civic reasoning”: the ability to evaluate online sources of information, understand how people create and spread online content, and consciously shift between different reading modes. Some programs explicitly teach students to recognize when skimming is appropriate versus when deeper engagement is needed—taking deliberate action to address the issue rather than assuming people will just naturally develop traditionally and digitally literate brains.)

While parents and educators can help, Wolf stresses that society must actively work to preserve spaces for deep reading while embracing digital literacy’s benefits. This means maintaining libraries and physical books alongside digital resources. It also means continuing to research how different kinds of digital, online reading—like tweets, blog articles, or ebooks—affect our brains.

(Shortform note: Relatedly, ongoing research explores how to best design libraries to support patrons’ needs. One study found that students develop emotional bonds with study spaces that help them feel comfortable and productive. Effective library spaces should be both functional as well as welcoming and safe. Some libraries now deliberately design distinct zones optimized for different reading modes—quiet, reflective spaces for sustained reading and more collaborative areas for interactive work. Library spaces often also set digital commons (areas with computers and tech) apart from the stacks and sitting areas for deep reading of physical books.)

We’re at a crucial turning point, Wolf argues. Our brains will change to suit how we read, and if we’re not careful, we might lose the deep reading capabilities that have been crucial to human intellectual development. However, this same plasticity means we can consciously shape how our brains evolve. By understanding how the brain learns to read and deliberately preserving the conditions for deep reading while embracing digital literacy’s benefits, we can potentially create reading brains that are more capable than ever before.

Studies and Strategies for a Digital World

Research published since the 2007 publication of Proust and the Squid has painted a mixed picture of how well our brains are adapting to the digital age. There’s some support for Wolf’s concern that consuming online information would, for instance, reduce the time we spend thinking deeply and critically.

Other studies argue that digital media clearly impacts our mental and emotional health, explaining that the impact depends on what you do online and for how long. However, researchers haven’t yet established clear, causal relationships between specific activities (like social media scrolling) and specific brain changes. This is because many studies on, for instance, social media, rely on self-reporting—a research method known for bias and error. Until we have better research, we don’t know precisely how the internet affects our brains.

Either way, there’s no going back to life before tech. But there are plenty of ways to adapt to the challenges it poses. For one, there’s widespread agreement that practices like meditation and exercise both help your brain stay healthy and sharp. You can also follow Cal Newport’s advice in Digital Minimalism to reduce, get intentional about, and take control of your tech use. This approach, he argues, will help you reclaim tech-free solitude, healthy relationships, and enjoyable leisure time.