OK, this is the first of my posts on the theories, debates and practices of online and distance education and is taken from week 1 of H800.
Hypothesis
People born after 1993 (for some reason) are different from us and they can't focus on anything for more than 2 minutes, their brains are wired differently from us and all they can do is skim read stuff. However adults, including experienced researchers and academics, also skim read stuff now and rarely read anything in depth. Society is dumbing down (I jest not) and the world is doomed (I jest)!
Discussion
The news about skim reading comes from looking at library systems and of course people skim read things there because they are lookign for the things they want to print or loan or download to read in detail later.
Secondly, the issue these days is not finding information but sifting information, we have more information at our fingertips than has ever been the case in the whole of human history (library at Alexandria? Pah!) so this 'horizontal' skim reading has been necessitaated by the volume of material to be taken into account.
Yes, there is a propensity for those immersed in the online world to skim, to muti-task and to juggle and yes it does change they way they interact with other things like books. So what? If the purpose of work/life/education is to get a job done, get it done and do something else.
Yes, this trait is more common amongst young people but that is because they get it and have adapted to the world they live in. Is it a trait exclusive to the young? No. Want refernces? Google "Prensky net generation" and "debunking prensky net generation"
Conclusion
The world is moving on and people are adapting to it. 'skim reading' is a necessary adaptation to the information infrastructure.
Anyone of any age can adapt to the new way of working and learning, it is not restricted to the young, you just need to accept that there is a perfectly valid reason for not reading every book cover to cover and move on.
Academic research is of course important but that is not the only reason people read and nor is it the only way to learn. The fact that researchers are reading more sources but reading them in less detail is not the end of civilisation as we know it. (I should emphasises that this last point is my own conclusion and not that of the course and or the academics involved in the papers we read.)