Why Indian students prefer YouTube to textbooks

Let me begin with an anecdote. I recently asked a question related to the working of a particular equipment being used by the student to carry out an experiment in the laboratory. The student, very confidently, gave a detailed answer that was completely incorrect in that it defied basic principles of physics. I was a bit perplexed since an answer like this is unlikely to be based simply on the student’s understanding but had to be from some book. So, I asked him which book had this explanation. After some hesitation, he sheepishly said it was from a YouTube video.
I later discovered this was not an isolated case — most students were now relying on YouTube instead of books for learning. Since there is no reason to believe that the sample of students in a large university like Delhi University, catering to students from all over the country, is somehow unique, one can argue that this trend is found among students in other places, too.
Interestingly, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. A few years ago, most students would use books as their primary source of information. But now, it seems that the default source of knowledge is YouTube. So, what could have changed in the last few years?
I don’t think we can know the answer for certain but there are some plausible hypotheses that we could consider in trying to understand this change. The Covid-19 pandemic forced most education to move online. This was disastrous for various reasons as far as learning was concerned. Access to a device for attending online classes and the internet bandwidth required were initial problems. Also, to be effective, online pedagogical methods need to be substantially different from chalk-and-talk teaching, and we teachers were simply not prepared for it.
Ultimately, most students did manage to get access to a smartphone simply because online instruction went on for almost two years. The fall in the cost of data because of a new entrant in the mobile phone space also played a role — since video needs high bandwidth, affordable data facilitated this transition.
This is only part of the story. What we still need to understand is why the students have not gone back to books now that online instruction has been replaced by regular teaching. The high price of books is certainly not the reason, since most students stopped buying hard copies of books a while ago. For the tenacious surfer, any book is available for free-of-cost download on the Internet. However, consulting the soft copies on their phones or laptops is also not very prevalent among students.
One reason is the change in attitudes among large sections of the current generation of students. This Instagram generation spends a large fraction of their time viewing reels on their phones. Their attention span is, by default, limited to a few minutes. Reading, at best, is limited to posts of a few lines.
Given this preference for visual media, one can ask why students are not taking excellent online courses but instead opting for YouTube videos put out by amateurs. After all, several universities in the West have put their courses online, and these are of excellent quality and free to download. In addition, the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) offers some outstanding courses free of cost.
The problem is twofold. First, the lectures offered by universities and those on NPTEL are usually intimidating for many students. This is simply because these lectures assume a basic understanding and prior knowledge of the subject, which most students feel they lack. The courses are also rigorous and demanding of their time and attention, which they are reluctant to put in.
There is also the issue of language. This is true not just for students who haven’t had their education in English, but also for those who might have been taught in English because comprehension of spoken English is challenging for many students. These students find it hard to fully understand even an offline lecture delivered in English. However, in that case, the teacher can typically explain using the vernacular so that at least the essential concept gets through. This is not an option with online lectures.
On YouTube, you can find videos, which, if not in the vernacular, are typically delivered bilingually and in a non-intimidating manner. The students feel comfortable with the format of short videos, which they think gives them the essence of the topic. Given the popularity of such videos, the search algorithm throws them up as top results in any search, which makes them more popular, thus increasing their algorithmic ranking even further.
I tried to explain to the student taking the viva why he should use books rather than unverified content on YouTube and he listened patiently. But, from his manner, it was clear that I was wasting my time. What this paucity of sustained attention, capacity to concentrate, and low reading skills holds for our future, only time will tell. Perhaps the Twitter/Insta generation may not need these as tools like ChatGPT might be enough.
Shobhit Mahajan is professor, department of physics and astrophysics, Delhi University.The views expressed are personal