Fifty-odd posts on Facebook and Twitter, mostly skimmed.

A recap of Sunday’s football

action. Four emails. Two full news articles, plus the rest of the headlines and subheads
on the front page. A fake news article, too. Throughout, an online chat with one friend
and a few text messages traded with another.

That’s the diet of text I consumed this morning as I put off figuring out how to open this
essay. Looking back on it reminds me of those old daytime talk-show segments about
parents who let their massively obese kids eat entire pizza pies and gallons of ice
cream for lunch. I’m not proud of it. But I also know I’m far from alone. Your reading
habits may not exactly mirror mine at my most dilettantish, insatiable, and distracted,
but no doubt they’ve also gotten worse over these past few years of increased internet
connectivity. Like that poor kid’s ice cream, it’s all harmless fun until you find yourself
binging on empty online calories every day, as many of us now do.

We can no longer deny the pernicious cognitive effects of reading online. Last July yet
another study on the subject was released, this one by researchers at Victoria
University of Wellington, in New Zealand. Their title—“Is Google Making Us Stupid? The
Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour”—promises a clear verdict, and indeed the
data is persuasive. They found that when participants read offline, they performed better
in concentration, comprehension, absorption, and recall. Online readers performed
better in only one category: total words consumed.

Lead researcher Val Hooper took the findings as an opportunity to raise a flag of
concern—but not the concern you might think. Instead of decrying the mind-numbing
consequences of shifting our reading habits online, Hooper frets that an old-fashioned
“linear” reading culture—comprising parents, teachers, scholars and authors who tend
to read and write in a manner requiring comprehension and recall, largely because
they’ve developed and maintained an ability to focus on text for more than a minute or
two at a time—is holding back the next generation of digital-native youngsters.

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“The structure of much of what we are reading is inappropriate for the way in which
we’re receiving information now,” Hooper warned in a press release accompanying the
study. “We need to learn how to read and write ‘digitally,’ as well as how to effectively
interpret and retain information we read online. If you think about how we’re training our
children to read, they’re being trained by those who were trained in the linear fashion.
So it will take at least a generation for significant change to happen.”

Hooper’s logic is symptomatic of our era. We’re so entranced by the promise of the
internet that we explain away any evidence of the medium’s negative effects as the
mere growing pains of a glorious new digital consciousness. As with the utopian visions
of previous centuries, however, the ship of our digital dreams isn’t necessarily equipped
to navigate the rocky banks of human nature—in this case, a neural architecture that is
in many ways fundamentally unsuited to an overstimulated, always-online environment.

Allow me to offer a contrasting vision: The internet is an amazing creation, yes, a

testament to human ingenuity in the delivery of both everyday necessities and enjoyable
junk. So is the McDonald’s drive-thru. Both entities have by now been recognized as
addictive and harmful if frequented too often. Over the past few decades we’ve come to
a widespread awareness of what fast food does to our bodies. If we want to maintain
the kind of thoughtful, reflective, curious minds that engineered the internet in the first
place, it’s time to face up to what reading online is doing to our brains.

Modern life is too busy to finish every #longread. For instance, you—especially if you’re
reading this online—are probably by now facing a decision point: read, skim or click
away. Like any writer, I appreciate your patronage, even in the smallest quantum of
readerly consideration. At the risk of seeming greedy, however, I’d like to ask for more,
and not just for me, but for whomever and whatever you plan to read today. I want your
sustained and focused attention. A precious commodity, I know. To help you trust me
with it, let me set you at ease on a few points:

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1) I’m not an old crank. Born in 1982, I’m actually at the leading edge of the so-called
millennial generation. As such, I learned to read and to love books in a world without
websites. Then the internet arrived in my home, and I’ve been using it daily since the
beginning of high school. I can’t imagine getting by without it.

2) I’m not here to judge. I struggle with my own reading habits, as noted above. For a
couple of years—roughly coinciding with the recent sharp rise in the amount of time the
average American spends looking at a screen every day (from seven and a half hours in
2010 to nine and a half in 2013)—I was not reading my usual lot of books, either. I
rationalized the drop-off by referencing my ravenous consumption of online reading
material. And I’m a writer; reading is one of my stocks-in-trade. I can only imagine what
these recent years of increasing connectivity have meant for more casual readers.
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3) I’m no Luddite. I don’t think we should go back to sending business correspondence

through the postal service, buying hardcover encyclopedia sets and annual update
volumes, or making pen-and-ink drawings of our brunch plates to share with friends
around the hearth while someone pounds out a tune on the family piano. Like antibiotics
and industrial farming, the internet is a boon to civilization and—for many of us—to our
personal quality of life. There’s no going back. But, as with other technological
advances, the internet also offers pitfalls that challenge us to develop better habits,
among which we should include the conscious cultivation of our brains with offline
reading.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. The popularity of software like Freedom and Cold
Turkey, which block internet access in the name of productivity, points to a rising
awareness that offline time needs to be carved out by any means necessary—even by
means of a technology that, at your direction, prevents you from doing what you could,
in theory, simply choose not to do. Similarly, in apparent recognition that many users
prefer not to be distracted by the internet while reading, Amazon seems committed to
keeping email and web-browsing capabilities off some of its e-reader models, including
the popular Kindle Paperwhite. (Here it’s worth noting the difference
between electronic reading, using offline devices like the Paperwhite,
and online reading. The latter is dangerous, as this essay will continue to discuss; the
former is a promising development and subject to very few of the same criticisms, so
long as electronic and online don’t come hand in hand.) The market is beginning to
speak.

So are scholars. Andrew Dillon, dean of the University of Texas at Austin School of
Information, has recently discussed online reading in interviews with newspapers and
magazines across the country. He describes the online environment as full of habit-
forming stimuli, from links that we click partially for the tiny dopamine reward of a new
screen to constantly refreshing displays that tickle our anticipation for ever-newer
“news.”

“This type of interactive style is hard to break, so when we do try to settle down with a
single text for an extended period of time, there is a form of withdrawal from the activity
of online behavior that needs to be consciously managed,” Dillon said in a phone
interview.

This withdrawal effect—which we might experience as feeling bored, antsy, distracted

or just mindlessly inclined toward our smartphones—can be enough to make us put
down a book altogether. And when we habitually avoid reading tasks that last more than
a few minutes or require deep concentration, we begin slowly to lose the skill, like a
foreign language we cease to practice.

“While we might say that people now spend more time reading than ever before, they
are reading in a particularly nonextended manner, so it is reasonable to assume that the
focused, lengthy reading skill that we cherish as the mark of an educated person must
be exercised routinely if it is to be sustained,” Dillon said.

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is not a new question. Type it into your search bar and
you may not get a straight answer, but you will find Nicholas Carr’s groundbreaking
2008 Atlantic essay of the same title, which sought an answer in the intersection of
neuroscience and psychology. Later expanded into his 2010 Pulitzer Prize-finalist
book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Carr’s work is required
reading for anyone troubled by digital-era changes to his or her intellectual and interior
life.

“For the last five centuries, ever since Gutenberg’s printing press made book reading a
populist pursuit,” Carr writes in The Shallows, “the linear, literary mind has been at the
center of art, science, and society. As supple as it is subtle, it’s been the imaginative
mind of the Renaissance, the rational mind of the Enlightenment, the inventive mind of
the Industrial Revolution, even the subversive mind of Modernism. It may soon be
yesterday’s mind.”

The addictive nature of online clicking and browsing is just one part of Carr’s argument.
He also raises questions about the limits of subtlety, irony and emotional depth in a
medium built for skimming. (For instance, a 2013 study has shown that reading literary
fiction makes readers more empathic; can multitasked, nonlinear reading replicate this
effect?) Carr’s most penetrating line of argument, however, has to do with “working
memory” and the internet’s effect on memory consolidation.

We’re all familiar, from Hollywood and comic books, with the image of a superhero or
android leafing through entire books in a matter of seconds, pulling up hundreds of
websites and clicking through in quick succession, eyes whizzing back and forth—
effectively “uploading” information to the brain. Perhaps those who look forward to a
new kind of digital, post-linear reading imagine that our brains will soon evolve to work
more like that. This is fantasy. For the next many thousands of years—the timescale on
which evolution does its slow work—we can reliably expect the human brain to have the
same hardwired limitations that it has today. One such limitation has to do with working
(or short-term) memory.
It depends which researcher you ask, but all agree that there are biological bounds to
how much information we can store in working memory before we begin to forget. We’re
often happily oblivious to our own frailty in this regard. A recent study from the
University of Utah showed that people who thought they were good at multitasking—in
this case, solving math problems while also memorizing strings of random letters—were
actually worse at it than people who
acknowledged their limitations. Likewise, when you click away from an article you’re
reading online to reply to an email, that distraction alone may be enough to effectively
flush whatever you’ve been reading out of your working memory—whether you want to
admit it or not.

The consolidation of working memory into long-term memory is crucial to learning, but
it’s a fragile process that can take hours. Carr compares it to “filling a bathtub with a
thimble.” In studies, groups asked to memorize and retain a list of nonsensical
vocabulary words are able to do so even if their memory-consolidation process is
interrupted two hours later by being asked to memorize a second list. However, if
they’re asked to memorize the second list immediately aftermemorizing the first list, they
usually forget the first. The timing of the interruption is key. This mirrors a famous 19th-
century study of boxers showing that head trauma tends to wipe out memories only
from the minutes and hours immediately preceding the damaging blow to the head. The
boxers’ brains were still consolidating these memories when the trauma occurred. The
memories hadn’t had time to take root in the brain.

Considering the two studies together, we can conclude that bombarding oneself with
bits of disparate information in quick succession—in other words, trying to read like a
multitasking Superman—is, for ordinary mortals, the educational equivalent of
repeatedly bashing one’s head against a wall. Nothing ever makes it into long-term
memory.

Carr sees this dynamic setting off a digital-era negative feedback loop in which we
cheat the potential of our human brains by treating them like computer hard drives. “As
our use of the web makes it harder for us to lock information into our biological
memory,” he writes, “we’re forced to rely more and more on the Net’s capacious and
easily searchable artificial memory, even if it makes us shallower thinkers.”

Linear reading, on the other hand, moves sequentially at a pace well timed to the
consolidation of memory. Call it “slow” reading, to extend the internet-as-McDonald’s
analogy. It turns out that this extremely old technology is actually exquisitely well tuned
to the way our brains acquire and store information.

Carr puts it best: “The internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to
scramble it.”
We’ll never get back the hours we’ve lost pouring click-bait through the sieve of our
working memories. But the good news is that we can change our habits. As Dillon has
pointed out in criticism of one of Carr’s more inflammatory phrases, the internet isn’t
“rewiring our brains” in any permanent way. Just as the ill effects of fast food and a
sedentary lifestyle can be countered by eating healthy food and exercising, bad reading
habits (i.e., reading online) can be overcome by making time for linear reading.

According to Art Markman, a professor of psychology at UT-Austin and author of Smart

Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others,
developing good offline reading habits is even less challenging than other forms of
personal discipline. “Once you get back into it, the reading experience is fun,” Markman
said. “Exercising isn’t always. Eating right sometimes requires you not to do the thing
that feels right in the short term. Reading does feel right. It’s just something we’ve
gotten away from.”

Markman emphasizes that the best way to re-establish good reading habits is simply to
turn off all internet-equipped devices, including smartphones, when it’s time to read. He
also advises setting up a space at home especially for reading, seeking the indulgence
of family, and joining a book club or finding some other social encouragement to read
books.

Regarding social encouragement to read offline, there may be more good news on the
way. As arguments forwarded by Dillon, Carr and others continue to seep into the
popular consciousness, we’re beginning to feel the first twinges of social pressure to
cultivate time away from the internet. As with the rise of sustainable-food culture, this is
a scenario in which peer- and class-based pressure can help us treat our minds and
bodies better, to the benefit of all. It may be wishful thinking, but perhaps once again
we’ll see a day when a living room without books, let alone a life without literature, is
just as unsatisfying as a dinner party of McDonald’s takeout.

I know I’d welcome that scenario. I’ve personally committed to spending at least a few
hours without internet access every day, at least some of which I devote to reading.
One day, hopefully, I’ll look back on my wasted hours of web-skimming sort of like a
dumb article I clicked on once, didn’t get much out of, and quickly clicked away from.
Which is another way of saying: In the context of a long, meaningful and memorable life
of reading, my detour into online reading has been a chapter well worth forgetting.
Tolentino, J. M. V. (2017). Wattpad, WHATpad, And WHY: An Audience Study Of
Movies Based On Wattpad Stories. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, University of
the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

This undergraduate thesis examines the Filipino audience reception of Wattpad based
movies produced since 2014. Wattpad is originally an online application where
individuals could craft their own stories and share them online. Gaining popularity in the
Philippines—whose fan base comes second to the United States—Wattpad has
transcended the online medium and has now become available through print, film, and
television.

Filipino movies based on Wattpad stories started in 2014. Wattpad and movies based
on the story lines therein, like any other text, have garnered both fans and haters. With
that said, this study uses a qualitative method of study, utilizing surveys and interviews
distributed to Filipino youth—that may either categorize themselves as fans or haters of
Wattpad-based movies—to determine how audience behavior and how they receive the
text based on its elements as well as the medium it is delivered to them. The researcher
relates the gathered data and results to McLuhan‘s Medium Theory and Blumler and
Katz‘s Uses and Gratifications Theory.

Keywords: Wattpad, audience study, television, remakes, uses and gratifications,

medium theory

There has been an increase in the amount of social media users in the past decade. While the useof social media is
strongly correlated to age, there has also been an increase in the number of adults whouse social media in the
United States of America at least (Perrin, 2015). Social media has revolutionizedthe way many of
us have accessed information and its influence does not seem to be waning any timesoon. It has affected
numerous aspects of our lives, one such area is the way many of us access readingmaterials. As
the masses entertain the opportunities it presents, story sharing websites have accumulatedthe
attention of the young Filipino writers and readers of today. The use of online story sharing
websiteshas been on the rise and one such website namely, Wattpad has been gaining traction in the Philippines
inrecent years. Wattpad can attribute its rising popularity in the Philippines due to a variety of
reasons thatinclude but are not limited to how people have developed the taste for serialized
stories (Chua, 2015) andthe lack of local publishing opportunities for Filipino
writers (Garchitorena, Writers-for-less: a case studyon the obscure exploitation of a young
filipino writer, n.d.). Lua(personal communication, March 7,2016,see A
ppendix A) theorizes that the demands of this technologically reliant age is affecting people’s
tastein literature and that in today’s fast paced world many readers are developing a preference to
stories that
are easily digestible and portable. In an attempt to explain what accounts to the global success of Wattpad,Lau,
the CEO of Wattpad, claims that it may be because these stories are episodic and thus, fit into
 people’s “fragmented” time schedule and because the content appeals to the locals as it feat
ure the socialrealities of nature (Santos, 2015). It could also be said that Wattpad has paved the
way for self-publishingopportunities because of this. Many people tend to have a lower opinion
of online writers thantraditionally published ones, generally speaking. It might be because these
online writers are usuallyyounger than most published authors and that many of them are
students that publish their stories andworks online and free of charge. The negative conception
that many have for these online writers makes itmuch harder for them to shift to the more
traditional book publishing methods due to the stigmasurrounding them (Garchitorena, Writers-
for-less: a case study on the obscure exploitation of a youngfilipino writer, n.d.). Many have said
that Wattpad has breathed new life in the local Philippine publishing
business due to the high demand of printed copies of Wattpad readers’ favorite stories. In Wattp
ad, astory’s popularity is depende
nt on how many people viewed the story. One of the local publishing housesmanaged to earn a great deal of
money due to their publishing one of the more popular local Wattpad
stories “She’s Dating the Gangster”
(The Daily Inquirer, 2013). Although Wattpad is contributing to therecent rise of Filipino
readers and aspiring writers who do not have access to higher levels of literature, itis arguable
that these published Wattpad books are degenerating the quality of modern Philippineliterature
because of its use of an unofficial language, cliché plotlines, and abuse of gender stereotypes

EFFECTS OF WATTPAD ON MODERN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 6

creates a world that is not fully equivalent to our own because it goes beyond the parameters by which life
is normally bounded”
(Reyes, 1984).
Lua further explains that the ‘triteness’ of these clichés
could becovered up by the uniqueness that the writer imparts in their stories such as the setting of the story, the
language used, the metaphors used to parallel real life, and the peculiarities of the characters.
“The plot
could be reworked to make the s
tory interesting and to give it depth.” But herein lays the problem, many
of these Wattpad stories try but fail to give a refreshing twist to these time-old tales.
“Utterly misguided and uneducated. Simply put, they bank on idiocy and the lack of
sensibility
”(Espiritu
, 2016). Espiritu explains his disapproval to the gender stereotypes imposed in these
books for it “banks on idiocy” and is seemingly uneducated. Undoubtedly, it misdirects
conceptions about
the social standing of a man and woman and if not, it imposes a specific idea of the supposed
attitude ofan individual towards the opposite sex. In any case, Espiritu finds this phenomenon as fashioning
aculture of mediocrity. For instance, one of the most heated plot under Wattpad is the
transformation of aless attractive girl into attaining a certain standard of beauty such as fair skin without any
perceivableblemishes that is particularly pervasive in this country. By then, as the main female
character better fitsthe societal mold of what is conside
red “beauty” and “ideal”, she then attracts more attention and
manages to have everything in her life fall to place such as achieving the boy of her dreams who ignored
her when she was still considered “ugly” in the eyes of many. The repetitive formulation
andrepresentation of male characters that are unrealistically masculine and prejudicially
dominant presents acognition that men should, to some degrees, act and be like this. The latent effect of such
plotlines maylead to wrong and poor conceptions about the way we view the world itself. To
support this,

ve, academics in the field haveno consensus as of yet for the literary phenomenon that is Wattpad. Opinions
vary vastly between one
academic to another. Lua further expounds, “I think that there is something called a deliberate
way of
w
riting in Taglish. It could be used to capture the atmosphere and precisely reflect what is in
reality.”
After all, Taglish has become part of Filipino culture already; in fact it has already become a sort oflingua franca
for a considerable size of the population. She is not against these published Taglish Wattpad
stories if the story is engaging and if the use of Taglish is on an “acceptable state”. However, as of now
there is still not a legitimate set of rules on the usage of Taglish in the Philippines so definitions on what
is “acceptable” will vary from person to person. It may be because Taglish is still not widely
accepted in
the academe area so there has not been a lot of effort given to studying this mode of speaking
andestablishing set rules and perimeters on its usage. Many academics see Wattpad as
unfavorable to the

EFFECTS OF WATTPAD ON MODERN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 5

development of literature and language because it forgoes proper grammar for the language of
the masseswhich does not give importance to basic grammar (Chua, 2015; Lua, 2016). Espiritu is
one such academic,
he is of a different opinion than Lua in that he criticizes these works because of the lack of “sensibility”
that these authors employ in their writing due to their lack of literary training which then results
to sub-par quality of books. He restates that he does not see these Wattpad stories as legitimate
literary works butmerely part of popular culture meant to entertain and not to further literature as
a whole. But one
shouldn’t discount pop culture’s influence immediately. Pop
ular culture is power, and whoever wields itto manipulate minds is likely to find its literary and
technological machinery turned against him when theminds it has manipulated discover its potency as a
political weapon (Garchitorena, Pop culture and therise of social media, n.d.). Therefore while many may
consider these Wattpad stories to be shallow andworthless, one should not discount their influence on
the millions of readers who avidly consume them.With the ever increasing number of Wattpad
readers, the number of critics who scorn and critiquethese Wattpad stories increase also. Many
say that these stories are very shallow and are not trulyintellectual material and that these books
are destroying Filipino Literature (Angeles, 2014). Supportingthis claim, Swirski (as cited in Lai,
n.d.,p.2) argues that popular literature merely duplicates the work of
“serious” fiction while depleting the latter’s pool of talent. Espiritu finds the plots in m
any of thesepublished Wattpad books terribly trite and lacking in depth. He implied that due to
the lack of imaginationfound in these books, the authors then fall back to the clichés that have
proved to be popular to theFilipino audience. This directly reflects the state of artistry depicted
and showcased in Philippine massmedia. As one ponders on what is being fed to the Filipino youth in terms
of artistry and literacy, howdifferent would the arts be in the Philippines if the country expunged
triteness and mediocrity andeffectively produced real artistry and literary works of art? Many argue that
clichés are signs of badwriting. A cliché is an expression that has been overused to the point that it
becomes trite, however, it isnot limited to just figures of speech but actions and events as well. Many of the
popular Wattpad stories
exhibit numerous examples of clichés whether in terms of writing or in plotlines. “These plotlines
are predictable and worthless in the perspective of art,” Espiritu reiterates. But Lua’s perspective
on the‘clichéd’ plots found in these works is more optimistic and she isn't quick to dismiss the literary depths
ofthese works. She explains her stand on this matter; she believes “that there is no original plot in
this world
a
nd what makes stories good are the nuances the writer imparts in these stories.” In fact, it is
believed that
in line with the new educational curriculum, also known as the K-12 system; Wattpad is included
in thestudies under Philippine literature. Whether this is a step forward to accepting Wattpad as
literary or adowngrade in the quality of standards in Philippine literature is still up for debate. These clichéd
plotlinesare popular to the masses because they could use it as a form of escape from reali
ty. “The romance mode

ua says thatthese repeating gender stereotypes may have the danger of influencing numerous
readers to accept thesenegative and unrealistic stereotypes as the general consensus as to how a
man or woman should act.Moreover, these stereotypes play an active role of influencing our
social cognitions -
“understanding,anticipation, situation, and emotional control”
(Wolska, 2011) and limit our views of human personalitiesand the realities of nature (Graydon & Verral,
n.d.). Regarding the stereotypes reinforced in these books,Lua says that these appeal to many
readers because it is very formulaic but that it because of it it maybecome more problematic. In
the end when asked of her if Wattpad is improving or degenerating thequality of Philippine Literature,
she says that it is too early to tell but that she is not quick to dismiss thepossibility of this form of online
reading. If Wattpad improves the quality of its stories and enforces a
stricter form of quality control then it may be beneficial to the state of Philippine Literature.
“However, asof now there is no consensus in the academe about Wattpad.” she finishes.

EFFECTS OF WATTPAD ON MODERN PHILIPPINE LITERATURE 7

Wattpad is relatively a new phenomenon which is why there are still a limited number of studiesbeing
conducted about it, however; preliminary opinions by our interviewees who are academics in
thefield of literature are divided. Some see it as a plague eating away of what is left in Philippine
literaturewhile some view in a more positive light as it may be the first step to the advancement
of a new standardof literary excellence emphasizing simplicity. With regards to the continuous
commercialization of thesebooks, Espiritu understa
nds this as a reflection of our society as generally “reading
-
deprived” and
popularity-obsessed. He emphasized that this is an unfortunate truth that radically needs to be
addressed.Though it is acknowledged that Wattpad is contributing to the rise of Filipino readers
and aspiring writers,certain dichotomies come with it which triggers disapproval from valuables in the literary
sphere. One ofthe main concerns troubling academics about Wattpad is the lack of proper quality
control. This paperaimed to illustrate the negative ramifications of Wattpad, however after
conducting an interview with Luawe were able to visualize the possible effects that were blind to
us before. The positives of Wattpad havestill not been totally realized because of the lack of quality control
enforced on the writers of many ofthese Wattpad stories but the possibilities are still there nonetheless.
A possible mode of action toimprove the writing of these aspiring writers is to conduct extensive
seminars which will aim to enhancetheir basic foundational skills in terms of proper usage of grammar and
encourage their ability to makecreatively thought-out plotlines that do not reinforce negative
stereotypes that may impact their audiencein ways that were not intended. Modern Philippine
literature is continuously growing and developing(Lua, 2016). As time progresses and standards of arts
evolve, Wattpad may garner a more favorablereception because art and beauty is a personal-social
conception, thus it is not constant. Despite itsshortcomings, writer Jun Cruz Reyes argued that
many of these books depict the social realities of naturewhich intentionally or unintentionally
enlightens an individual to the pressing matters of today (as cited in
Chua, 2015). “For now, this is what we
know: Wattpad will affect literature and literacy in the Philippines.
Whether it’s for the better or for worse solely rests on the young adults of today”
(Chua, 2015). Might theoverall quality of Philippine modern literature degenerate or conform
and enrich a rather lacking form ofartistry depends on the youth and their willingness to enhance
their craft into a more sensible writing and
readership. To support this claim, we quote Espiritu: “the best of efforts at becoming suc
cessful in the arts
must come from the youth themselves”.