The Internet Either Is or Is Not Ruining Teens' Brains, Say Experts
Now that teen smoking rates are in decline and rap music has been throughly mainstreamed, the only thing to worry about re: America's Children is whether the internet and smartphones are turning their brains into piles of frozen yogurt. Internet experts say: Maybe!
The Pew Center for Asking People What They Think About the Internet surveyed 1,021 "internet experts and other internet users" on whether they believed non-stop internet use will turn teens into cyberpunk wizards with a perfect command of all world knowledge, or slug-like proto-humans whose most complex possible thought is a series of <emoji. (Seriously, those were the only two options.)
Internet experts were in the most part optimistic: 55% of respondents said that teens' mental abilities are being positively influenced by the internet. 43% feared they were becoming too distracted to hold a deep thought. Then the internet experts closed the window in which they responded to the questionnaire and resumed their five-hour internet porn marathon.
