Interesting to see the talk of “F-pattern scrolling through electronic publications”, which was new to me.
As an academic, the vast majority of my reading is on my Kobo, and I don’t think this particular medium encourages this. Sure, an e-reader is inferior to print books in terms of random access and keeping multiple pages open at once, but I don’t find myself skimming the way I might on a laptop screen or smartphone.
any system with pages you "turn" certainly feels very different to reading a webpage (or PDF) with free vertical scrolling
Also, when I (GenX) open my ereader on my phone, I read it just like anything else. And I read paper books, on two e-readers, my phone, and my computer screen.
If it's some online article, though, I definitely skim. And I'd skim if it were printed, too.