We are only beginning to understand digital media’s impact on children, researchers say, and a leading neuroscientist worries all of this screen time could rob children of “the ability to gain real understanding.”

Essentially, Baroness Greenfield, a popular scientist in England, suggests information is not knowledge and while kids may be better at grabbing information, they may lose an edge in understanding everything they gather.

Understanding requires the ability to relate one subject to something else – to place something in context. If, because of your development in childhood, you lack that contextual framework, then you can only take it at face value and move on. What you see is indeed what you get. You download information, but you cannot necessarily understand it. – “Computers in schools could do more harm than good,” EducationNews.org, 2/12/10.

Greenfield also cited a new report, which I am still looking for, that suggested students’ ability to study may be eroding.

Constant use of the internet has rewired their brains to function differently from those of earlier generations: they skip from topic to topic in an "associative" mode of thinking, and are less capable of the linear thought required for skills like reading and writing at length.

Wherever you stand in the debate over the rise in digital media’s use by children, the commentary is worth checking out.