All evidence suggests that many more people are reading, writing and crucially responding to each other a lot more since the advent of the Internet. That said, it’s possible that the impacts Carr is talking about may be more visible on some portions of the population –especially kids– who may end up spending a lot more hours consuming video and gaming on the Internet, especially if parents let children have their own unmonitored use of computer (similar to allowing a TV in a child’s bedroom). I think the real story might be a bimodal distribution in which some people benefit greatly from the riches of engaged conversation while others find themselves subject to even more passive consumption in the mode of television, since, surely, the Internet also delivers that experience. However, there isn’t that much of that discussion in the book and more examples of people like him who I think are, frankly, the wrong target for this concern.