Nearly three quarters of the 685 public and private K-12 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense Media online poll believe that students use of entertainment media (including TV, video games, texting and social networking) "has hurt student's attention spans a lot or somewhat."

Likewise, in the Pew online survey, which polled 2,462 middle and high school teachers, 87% report that these technologies are creating "an easily distracted generation with short attention spans," and 64% say that digital technologies "do more to distract students than to help them academically."

The internet and technology haven’t only impacted the way we read, but it has also created several distractions and alternatives to reading.  We are still reading via technology (text messages, status updates, and articles) but there are ever-increasing distractions from choosing to spend our time reading a book or other activities that build reading comprehension and fluency. 

Researchers have conducted studies which they believe prove the internet has ‘rewired’ the way our brains absorb information. When you are searching the internet how long do you think you spend on a single page? (Hopefully you’re still on this page at this point!) Probably not very long. The internet offers so many gateways to other pages, that it has made it difficult for us to focus on one piece of information at a time. In other words: the internet is making us all a little more A.D.D.

"An adult's IQ can be influenced much either way by reading anything, and I would guess that smart people will use the Internet for smart things and stupid people will use it for stupid things in the same way that smart people read literature and stupid people read crap fiction.” -Sandra Kelly, 3M Corp.'s Market Research Manager