Cingel, who worked with S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Penn State's Media Effects Research Laboratory, said the use of these shortcuts may hinder a tween's ability to switch between techspeak and the normal rules of grammar. Cingel gave middle school students in a central Pennsylvania school district a grammar assessment test. The researchers reviewed the test, which was based on a ninth-grade grammar review, to ensure that all the students in the study had been taught the concepts.

What children see or interact with on the screen is only a representation of things in the real world. The screen symbols aren’t able to provide as full an experience for kids as the interactions they can have with real world people and things. And while playing games with apps and computers could be considered more active than TV viewing, it is still limited to what happens between the child and a device — it doesn’t involve the whole child’s body, brain, and senses.

"If you are a slow writer you have not automated your writing skills adequately - so much so that much more of your mental capacity is taken up by processing that text.

"This even affects undergraduates in a stressed situation like an examination, but has a much greater impact at the younger age group." It is hardly surprising that many children growing up in an age where instant messages have replaced handwritten notes to friends, will struggle when they take up a pen. With the arrival of chip and pin, even a person's signature has become obsolete as a means of identification. It is not just children's over-reliance on computers and mobile phones for communication that is the problem, it is the way technology encroaches on leisure time too