The common thread in these disabilities is the division of attention. The richness of our thoughts, our memories and even our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and sustain concentration.

When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking.

Other studies, however, found that such rapid shifts in focus, even if performed adeptly, result in less rigorous and "more automatic" thinking.

Television, movies, video games, mobile phones, and the Internet have all been identified as the culprits that rot the brain, desensitize, delude, and generally ruin the minds of the young (and perhaps everyone else too)

The media and popular press point clearly to new technologies as the cause of this decline but also, ironically, as the source of the “new literacy.”

Report var addthis_config = {data_track_clickback: false, ui_click: true, services_compact: "reddit, linkedin, tumblr, pinterest, google_plusone_share, more", services_exclude: "facebook, twitter, print"} February 29, 2012 Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives Main findings: Teens, technology, and human potential in 2020 By Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie Respondents’ thoughts Hyperconnected. Always on. These terms have been invented to describe the environment created when people are linked continuously through tech devices to other humans and to global intelligence. Teens and young adults have been at the forefront of the rapid adoption of the mobile internet and the always-on lifestyle it has made possible. The most recent nationally representative surveys of the Pew Internet Project show how immersed teens and young adults are in the tech environment and how tied they are to the mobile and social sides of it. Some 95% of teens ages 12-17 are online, 76% use social networking sites, and 77% have cell phones. Moreover, 96% of those ages 18-29 are internet users, 84% use social networking sites, and 97% have cell phones. Well over half of those in that age cohort have smartphones and 23% own tablet computers like iPads

Alvaro Retana, a distinguished technologist with Hewlett-Packard, expressed concerns about humans’ future ability to tackle complex challenges. “The short attention spans resulting from the quick interactions will be detrimental to focusing on the harder problems, and we will probably see a stagnation in many areas: technology, even social venues such as literature,” he predicted. “The people who will strive and lead the charge will be the ones able to disconnect themselves to focus on specific problems.”

Melissa Ashner, a student at the College of William and Mary, observed, “People report having more difficulty with sustained attention (i.e., becoming immersed in a book).

The opposite theory can be seen with Norval D. Glenn. Glenn reports on a study released in 1991 by Alwin. The study examined the correlation between variables such as television, age, and family background with scores on a vocabulary test. (Glenn 216) The test was conducted by National Opinion Research Center (NORC ) from 1974 to 1990. The 10-item vocabulary test was administered to nine of the General Social Surveys. (216) The vocabulary test was developed in 1942 by Gallup and Thorndike and since then the education-adjusted mean vocabulary scores have been in decline.

Glenn shows that the Alwin study proves a negative correlation between television and vocabulary.

For example from 1975 to1990, the percentage of adults who have read an entire book in the past week declined from 30% to 24%. (Glenn 227). A more stunning statistic is the percentage of people who did not complete an entire book in the past year doubled from 8% in 1978 to 16% in 1990. Another major fault of Fowles argument is that it ignores children and young adults. Consuming and borrowing from the public library are not activities that the majority of children and young adults engage in, yet they are the one that tend to watch television the most. (Hornik 202)

“They may use a homophone, such as gr8 for great, or an initial, like, LOL for laugh out loud,” Northwestern researcher Drew Cingel explained in a statement. Other shortcuts include dropping non-essential letters, such as changing the word “would” to “wud.”

In other words, if you send your kid a lot of texts with word adaptations, then he or she will probably imitate it,”

These adaptations could affect their offline language skills that are important to language development and grammar skills, as well.”

Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills. Almost a third of those students are failing.

Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.

"Little happy faces ... or a sad face ... little abbreviations," show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani. "Instead of 'because', it's 'cuz'. That's one I see fairly frequently," she says, and these are new in the past five years.

As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles

Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology,

Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said.

Reading according to Holte (1998) adds quality to life and provides access to culture and cultural heritage.

Due to technological development, reading habits are changing. In our society today, while technology is slowly taking a steady control over individual lives, the reading habit is fast vanishing into thin air (The Hindu, 2004). Students now lack the skill of reading. Instead they spend more hours on electronic media. Browsing the net, playing with funky handsets and passing non-stop SMSs seem to be the order of the day, there by making reading a book or any other piece of written material in a quiet or peaceful corner of a library or home become an archaic idea for most school children and adults (The Hindu, 2004). Obama (2008) in his speech pinpointed that children cannot achieve unless they raise their expectations and turn off television sets. Shabi and Udofia (2009) noted that active learning from books is better than passive learning such as watching televisions and playing games.

the influence of electronic media on the children's reading hours

What are we to do about the tech overload happening right now to students and everyone else?

However, the overuse of these advancements can really hamper or even damage their development in the personal growth, communication and educational department.

These activities have affected their psyche negatively, consequently leading to increased frustration. Now they get frustrated whenever they are asked to do anything while playing games or using internet