I'm surprised the article didn't address backlit screens vs front lit or traditional print. Eye fatigue is a massive factor that effects our reading habits. In fact, I'd wager it's the ONLY factor messing with how we read on devices versus not. I know personally I cannot CANNOT read for content from a back-lit glowing screen. I can skim, browse, read short news articles (that yes, I probably read non-linearly like the article says) but when my art history professors dropped a few ten page articles on us every week to read, I HAD to print them out and read them on paper. People looked at me funny when I showed up to class with my binder of printed out articles, but I darn well know I got more content out of them. I own a Nook Simpletouch with Glowlight for my digital books. It's that E-ink display so it looks like regular soft-cover book/newsprint paper when you view it. When you turn on the glowlight, it's a front-light. Meaning the wee LEDs shine light on the front of the surface from the edges. Eye fatigue is non-existent compared to my mom's glowing Nook tablet thing. She can't read on it either and it's changed from a "take it on the boat to read while your dad fishes" machine into an AngryBirds and Facebook machine.
Oh thank God, I thought thought doing that was just me being weird and a Luddite! I have Nystagmus and trying to read on backlit screens seems to make that worse, too.
The sad thing is, I don't think "the next generation" of readers is going to notice their different reading styles. They're going to think skimming is reading and I don't think (with smartphones and tablets) they're going to be ABLE to sit down and focus on a page of text. As an old fart, I think it's shortening attention spans. As a Redditor coming here to Hubski, I've had to "slow my role" because reading as opposed to skimming is so much more important here. In the end, this is going to be a good thing for me--hanging out here.