> Actually, young people are writing more. Before the Internet, many people out of school never again wrote a full paragraph. Now they write a few every day. I

> Actually, young people are writing more. Before the Internet, many people out of school never again wrote a full paragraph. Now they write a few every day. I'm not convinced this is providing any value in the way you're implying. When people talk about the cognitive benefits of writing, what they mean is writing which makes you organize your thoughts, and notice when they are messy and disjointed. I think a majority of the writing people do online is not of that form: instead it takes the form of emotional outbursts which essentially go directly from the amygdala to the fingers and barely involve the higher brain functions at all, much less trigger the kind of introspection and reflection that people mean when they say writing is good for you. In other words, just as not all reading is equally valuable, I don't think all writing is either and I think almost all Internet writing is of the low-value kind.