4 Reasons to Doodle Instead of Scroll
The Power of Making Images
Most people today, whether living in the remote outskirts of Mongolia or middle America, are relying on devices that change their behavior. They are more likely to be scrolling and swiping at their phones instead of doodling on a piece of paper.
Some staggering statistics:
1. 91% of the world’s population use a digital device usually a smart phone.
2. The remaining 9% are probably children, babies, or really old people not acquainted with technology.
As a painter and psychologist, I’m struck by the huge change in how we use our hands. A standardized movement is occurring.
It’s often ignored.
In meetings I doodle on a yellow legal pad. These images, grids, or conceptual maps litter the sides of my notes.
Now I notice, at meetings or in the grocery store or anywhere, people are scrolling and swiping the surface of their phones.
I looked into this phenomenon in journals such as “Journal of Motor Behavior”, “Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience” and “Neuropsychologia.”
Here is what I discovered.
Doodling [which I find relaxing, imaginative, and insightful]
1. Fine Motor Skills: Doodling involves intricate, controlled movements of the hand, wrist, and fingers. It requires the precise coordination of these fine motor skills to create specific shapes, patterns, or drawings.
2. Visuo-Spatial Integration: Doodling requires individuals to visually process information and translate it into precise hand movements on paper. This integration of visual perception and motor execution is a fundamental aspect of doodling.
3. Tactile Feedback: When doodling with physical tools like pens or pencils, individuals receive tactile feedback from the surface they are drawing on. This feedback helps refine movements and provides sensory input about the shapes being created.
4. Pressure Sensitivity: Depending on the desired effect, doodlers may adjust the pressure they apply to the writing instrument. This requires a nuanced control of force, contributing to a range of line thicknesses and styles.
Swiping and Scrolling:
1. Coarser Movements: When swiping and scrolling, we use broad hand and finger movements across the screen. These actions do not exercise fine motor control like doodling.
2. Less Tactile Feedback: Digital screens provide a smoother, less tactile surface compared to physical paper. This means there’s less sensory information to guide movements.
3. Limited Visuo-Spatial Integration: While swiping and scrolling do require visual processing to guide the action, the movements are standard more straightforward and less intricate and less creative.
4. Predominantly Digital Interface: Swiping and scrolling occur on a digital interface, which lacks the physicality of pen/pencil on paper. This means there’s a level of detachment from the physical world.
Most alarming is the last fact — -a heightened level of detachment with the physical world.
This can lead to all sorts of other disconnections that most of us would regret down the line.
Yet, these facts come from just a few journals. If you are interested in exploring more on this subject, there are other professional journals I didn’t research…journals addressing human-computer interaction and digital technology.
My take: doodle as much and as often as you can. It’s pleasurable, full of self-expression and hugely creative. And most of all it leads to imaginative insights.
