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I suppose online reading may be neurologically different than book reading. I'm hardly qualified to say, but the internet is most definitely not making us stupid. (It may make it easier to see how stupid we are though.)
I very much remember what research was like pre-internet. First, I had to be interested/motivated enough to actually:
1. go to a library
2. look up things in those huge books that tracked magazine articles every year
3. look up things in the card catalog.
4. find that the library had limited books about the subject, possibly outdated.
5. fill out slips to give the reference library to fetch the magazine articles I wanted.
6. read through everything, hoping to find references to the specific subject I was trying to research.
So, this sort of worked, but it was painfully slow and not at my house.
Now with internet the most trifling curiosity can be satisfied with a simple search that takes seconds and minutes worth of reading. Of course more important subjects can be researched. The internet may not have free information available depending on the subject but at least you can find which books and reports exist on the subject and buy them if you need to.
Internet way better than no internet. Not making us stupid at all.
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