Scientists then studied professional speed-readers and they discovered that even though they are obviously better at it than the rest of us, the same thing happens. This showed there's just a maximum limit for how quickly humans can absorb information, and trying to bust through that barrier simply busts your brain's ability to understand it instead. The scientists investigating this also discovered that if you make people read quickly, they are much less likely to grapple with complex or challenging material. They start to prefer simplistic statements. After I read this, I looked again at my own habits. When I read a physical newspaper, I'll often be drawn to the stories that I don't understand yet--why, say, is there an uprising in Chile? But when I read the same newspaper online, I usually skim those stories, and click on the simpler, more scannable stories related to the stuff I already know. After I noticed this, I wondered if in some ways we are increasingly speed-reading life, skimming hurriedly from one thing to another, absorbing less and less.

— Stolen Focus by Johann Hari (Page 35)