Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

As the cyborg anthropologist Amber Case argues, technology evolves us just as we evolve it; we are cyborgs already. While the term ‘cyborg’ conjures up science-fiction characters such as RoboCop and Iron Man, Case argues that devices don’t need to be implanted into our bodies for us to be connected to and unable to function without them.

The results often indicate that students won’t admit to being ‘addicted’, but will confess to using their phones and computers for 12 hours a day. When we talk about technological unemployment, they vehemently insist that humans are better than machines, yet they worry about getting jobs.

Researchers from University College London report that readers skim information, rarely reread, and engage in something called ‘power browsing’ rather than actual reading. ‘The picture that emerges,’ the study reports, ‘is that most visitors to scholarly sites view only a few pages, many of which do not even contain real content, and in any case do not stop long enough to do any real reading.’ This could signal the emergence of ‘a whole new form of online reading behaviour… one based on skimming titles, contents pages and abstracts’. The development psychologist Maryanne Wolf at Tufts University in Massachusetts argues that: ‘We are not only what we read. We are how we read,’ and that our online habits might cause us to lose the ability to read closely, carefully and critically.

researchers at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland found significant differences between people who use smartphones and people who don’t. Because we text with our thumbs and swipe with our index fingers, smartphone users’ brains register more activity in the parts of the brain that correspond to these digits; these areas of the brain are also bigger. A University of Sussex study found that people who multitask across multiple devices have decreased grey-matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the region of the brain that controls emotional and cognitive functioning.

Psychologists believe that social media creates a ‘dopamine induced loop’ of craving and satisfaction.

More than 210,000 children aged 6-19 in South Korea could require medication or even hospitalisation for internet addiction, and the country has trained counsellors to specifically address the problem. Roughly 10 million Chinese teenagers have been identified as internet-addicted; China has regulations discouraging online gaming for more than three hours a day.

Advocates argue that internet addiction involves all the classic components of addiction: excessive use, withdrawal, tolerance and negative repercussions. But it’s tricky to distinguish between compulsion and addiction – some psychologists don’t believe that internet addiction is an actual disorder, but rather a consequence of boredom or unhappiness (similarly, television addiction isn’t an official disorder, either).

This expectation causes a feedback loop. And as people become accustomed to getting immediate answers, they do less digging for information themselves. I can’t count how often my students email me to ask when my office hours are. I write back the same way every time: ‘Check the first page of the syllabus.’ They email me without checking to see if the syllabus has the answer because they can, because I’m supposed to be accessible and answer their questions.

Increasingly, students express dismay at their ability to manage time and to stay focused. Though I’m grateful on a daily basis that Facebook and cellphones weren’t around when I was in college, this isn’t a new problem. Students have always found more satisfying ways to spend time than writing essays and studying for tests; even with nothing urgently (or not so urgently) fun to do, they have always waited until the last minute. But now students who aren’t necessarily procrastinators, or who used to be able to focus on assignments, find it harder and harder to fight distraction.

The simple answer is that we’re obsessed, but that term requires unpacking. Even though it might make us anxious – the official term is ‘TechnoStressed’ – we feel we must constantly check our various accounts because we can. Many people are also driven by the fear of missing out (FOMO). Because of how much happens in any given instant, we’re missing something when we’re unplugged, and we’re often compelled to log back on to see what’s happened since our last visit, or to confirm that nothing has.

California State University study monitored middle-, high-school and college students who had been instructed to research something important for 15 minutes. Two minutes in, students’ focus started to wane as they checked messages, texts and various websites. The average student lasted six minutes before caving to the temptation to engage in social media. Despite being watched, students spent only approximately 65 per cent of the allotted time studying.

Ohio State University found that walking while texting has caused a significant rise in injuries. In Chongqing in China, sidewalks contain a special lane for people who can’t be bothered to look up from their phones. And in the German city of Augsburg, there are traffic signals on the ground for people who would otherwise endanger themselves by failing to notice red lights.

Technology demands a significant amount of time and attention and has conditioned them to not question it. It takes up more and more of their bandwidth, and the net effect is lobotomising.

. But our discussions suffer, which makes my job harder. When reading on screens, students don’t annotate or reread. They get glassy-eyed, zone out, and then struggle to find quotes they only vaguely remember when it comes time to write the paper. The endless opportunities for distraction also mean that they miss other aspects of class, including important instructions.

An increasing number of students present me with documentation from the student disabilities office that entitles them to use a laptop to take notes. If students see a few classmates with laptops, they inevitably start using theirs too. I can’t tell them that only a couple people are sanctioned to use the computers because of learning or cognitive difficulties without infringing on the students’ privacy,

A study from Princeton University shows that we process information better when taking notes by hand because writing is slower than typing (an argument often spun in favour of laptops), which helps students learn and retain the material. Similarly, people better comprehend what they’re reading if it’s on paper rather than on the screen.

A University of Waterloo professor who put a postgraduate at the back of his lecture hall to observe his students learned that 85 per cent of them did something unrelated to class on their laptops; a Cornell University study confirms that most students engage in ‘high-tech “doodling”’ and communication during class. One might think that the whopping $65,000 cost of attending Boston University for a year would provide ample reason to maintain focus during class, but one would be wrong.