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Indian children on an average spend 34 hours online every month against the global average of 39 hours, revealed a recent survey. Children of only two other countries - China (33 hours) and Japan (31 hours) seemed to spend fewer hours online, according to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, which was based on a survey of adults and children in 12 countries.

How many children today are becoming Socrates' nightmare, decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes? Will they become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination, and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought? Or, will the new demands of information technologies to multitask, integrate, and prioritize vast amounts of information help to develop equally, if not more valuable, skills that will increase human intellectual capacities, quality of life, and collective wisdom as a species?