Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Another study showed that Internet users surfing the web tended to surf aimlessly when reading something that included hypertext links to other selected pieces of information and that some could not remember what they had and had not read.

They concluded that the people in the study predominantly read via the Internet by "skimming" and not reading in depth, hopping from one site to another. The researchers coined the term "power browsers" and this activity is not reading in the traditional sense. This reflects other research.

Carr argues that even the media now is adapting to the Internet, so that news stories are getting shorter, with abstracts, headlines and easy to browse pages.