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But do social networking sites have any educational benefits? Aside from helping students to make new friends, do social networking sites facilitate learning? The answer seems to be that they do. The National Literacy Trust found that social networking sites and blogs help students to develop more positive attitudes toward writing and to become more confident in their writing abilities. According to one of the studies, 49 per cent of young people believe that writing is “boring.” However, students who use technology-based texts such as blogs have more positive attitudes toward writing. Whereas 60 per cent of bloggers say that they enjoy writing, only 40 per cent of non-bloggers find writing enjoyable. The study also showed that students who write blogs or maintain a profile on a social networking site tend to be more confident about their writing ability. More than 60 per cent of students who blog and 56 per cent of students who have a profile on a social networking site claim to be “good” or “very good” writers, compared with only 47 per cent of those who don’t use online formats. Having a blog also affects writing behaviour. Students who are active online are significantly more likely to keep a journal or write short stories, letters or song lyrics than those without a social networking presence. According to the ­research, 13 per cent of students have their own website, 24 per cent write a blog and 56 per cent have a profile on a ­social networking site. Of the five kinds of writing that students engaged in most regularly, four were technology based: 82 per cent of students sent text messages (77 per cent of these messages were notes, answers to questions asked in class or remarks about homework assignments), 73 per cent used instant messaging, 67 per cent sent e-mails and 63 per cent wrote on social networking sites. The study also explored why young people who lack confidence in their writing ability perceive themselves to be poor writers. Although the reasons varied with each age group, 20 per cent of the older students attributed their poor writing skills to the fact that they do not write much.

Dr. Spencer Jordan, a creative writing teacher in the School of Education at the University of Wales, notes that web ­technologies encourage young people to write confidently about things they enjoy. He notes, “When I was a kid, I used to write in exercise books kept in a drawer, but now that young people write on the web, there’s a whole ­community out there to read their work. It’s interactive, and that makes it more appealing to them.” Jordan believes that encouraging students to share their writing boosts their confidence in their writing abilities.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

ven accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.

What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.

This was not how it was supposed to have turned out. A number of studies have been released that suggested a negative correlation between Internet use and reading. Fortunately, those studies are now considered to have been unduly alarmist, according to several experts in the field.

ndeed, despite fears that the Internet would stunt the reading of books, the sale of books has continued to trend upward over the past several years. In 2005, sales jumped 9.9%, to $25 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers.

With such a large proportion of reading and writing taking place on the Internet, literacy has changed from a solitary pursuit into a collective one.