is there any research which shows how new experts in field are going away from reading research papers or long texts and over relying on the different modalities for information and understanding concepts
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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 2025 young adults news video social media replacing text reading
I now have enough to give a thorough, well-sourced answer. Here is the synthesis:
What the Research Actually Shows
This is a real and documented phenomenon, but it sits across several overlapping areas of research: information-seeking behavior, science communication, cognitive science of reading, and media studies. No single landmark paper covers it all - instead, the evidence comes from multiple converging streams.
1. The General Shift Away from Text-Based Information
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 is the most rigorous large-scale tracking study here. Based on nearly 100,000 respondents across 48 countries:
- 44% of 18-24 year olds now say social media and video networks are their main source of news - a jump from just 21% in 2015
- Only 14% of 18-24s now go directly to a news website or app as their main access route
- Social video consumption across all ages grew from 52% (2020) to 65% (2025)
- The shift is driven by TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube displacing text-based sources
Reuters Institute also released a dedicated report in early 2025, "Understanding Young News Audiences at a Time of Rapid Change," specifically noting that most news consumption by young people is now incidental rather than intentional - they encounter information passively in algorithm-driven feeds rather than seeking it out.
2. Academic Reading and AI-Assisted Shortcuts
A June 2025 piece in The Conversation by Naomi Baron (author of a book specifically on this topic) synthesizes the academic and cultural evidence on this:
- US fourth graders reading for fun "almost every day" fell from 53% (1984) to 39% (2022); eighth graders from 35% to 14% (2023) - [National Assessment of Educational Progress data]
- UK's 2024 National Literacy Trust survey: only 1 in 3 children aged 8-18 said they enjoyed reading in their spare time, down ~9 percentage points in a single year
- 44% of US adults reported reading no books in 2023
- In the UK, 26% of self-identified "lapsed readers" stopped because of time on social media
For researchers specifically, tools like SciSpace, Elicit, Consensus, and ScienceDirect AI now offer AI-generated literature summaries, with Elsevier's own platform using the tagline "Goodbye wasted reading time." The concern is that users get the conclusion without engaging with methods, caveats, or the reasoning that makes a finding meaningful.
3. The Misinformation Problem on Video Platforms
A 2025 study published in JAMA Network Open (Brooke Nickel et al., e2461940) analyzed nearly 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts about medical screening tests and found an overwhelming proportion contained misleading information - often from accounts with financial interests in the tests. Nature's editorial from June 2026 references this directly and frames it as a science communication crisis: video-first platforms are replacing text-based sources faster than scientists and credible communicators can populate them.
A February 2026 study (Morais & Fernandes, Journal of Science Communication) found that science influencer videos on TikTok routinely do not cite sources, making independent verification almost impossible.
4. The "Shallow Reading" Problem in Education
Conference proceedings from ICOGE 2025 include data showing a statistically significant negative correlation (r = -0.38, p < .01) between time spent on TikTok/Instagram and reading motivation, with the autonomy dimension (reading out of intrinsic interest) showing the strongest negative relationship (r = -0.41). Conversely, educational YouTube use showed a positive correlation with reading confidence.
A 2019 paper in BioEssays (França & Monserrat, PMID: 30485465) raised an earlier version of this concern - arguing that researchers reading more papers superficially (skimming abstracts, relying on summaries) rather than fewer papers deeply may be contributing to the reproducibility crisis in science, since shallow reading produces poorer critical appraisal of methods.
5. What Is Specific to New Experts vs. the General Public
The research doesn't sharply separate "new experts" from "students" or "young adults," but several threads point to the same group:
- Graduate students and early-career researchers are the ones most likely to have grown up with TikTok/YouTube as primary information channels
- AI-assisted literature tools are most heavily marketed to and adopted by newer researchers with less experience doing manual literature reviews
- The PCAH 2025 Conference proceedings note that challenges observed in professional education settings include "over-reliance on AI-generated summaries and varying levels of digital literacy" as major issues in critical reading instruction
- The cognitive science literature (Maryanne Wolf's work on "deep reading") warns that the neural circuits for sustained analytical reading require regular practice - and that younger cohorts who grew up on short-form content may have less developed capacity for tolerating long-form primary texts
The Key Gap in the Literature
There is no rigorous RCT or longitudinal cohort study specifically measuring whether new professionals (doctors, engineers, scientists) who rely on video/podcast/AI summaries develop meaningfully weaker domain expertise than peers who read primary literature. That study has not been done yet - the evidence is largely observational, cross-sectional, and inferred from media consumption data. This is an active concern in science education circles, not yet a settled empirical finding.
Summary Table
| Evidence Type | Source | Key Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Large survey, 48 countries | Reuters Institute DNR 2025 | 44% of 18-24s use social/video as main news source; up from 21% in 2015 |
| Longitudinal US data | NAEP / National Literacy Trust | Reading for pleasure among students collapsed over 2 decades |
| JAMA Network Open (2025) | Nickel et al. | ~1,000 medical TikTok/Instagram posts showed overwhelming misinformation |
| Journal of Science Communication (2026) | Morais & Fernandes | Science TikTok videos routinely don't cite sources |
| BioEssays letter (2019) | França & Monserrat (PMID 30485465) | Shallow paper reading linked to reproducibility crisis |
| Conference data (ICOGE 2025) | Multiple | TikTok/Instagram use negatively correlated with reading motivation (r = -0.38) |
| Nature editorial (June 2026) | Nature editors | Video platforms replacing text-based science communication at alarming pace |
The concern you're describing is real, documented, and accelerating - but the direct causal link between "less paper reading" and "weaker expertise" among new professionals remains an important research gap worth watching.
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