So, where is this instant information iPhone generation taking us?
I heard some of the answers at a teacher's conference that I spoke at in Nelson last Thursday.
Turns out, according to the Oral Language presenter, our brain has 100 billion neurons that carry our messages along neural pathways, that's almost one for every dollar Apple will make this year. Twenty-five per cent of our energy budget goes on our brains to fuel the 100 billion neurons buzzing around messages.
What computers, laptops and iPhones do not tell us in their "everything is instant" promo is too much screen time on their own stops interaction and closes down these neural pathways. Reading from a book does the exact opposite.
The term use it or lose it comes to mind.
Interestingly, the level of language and vocabulary at the age of 5 is a direct indicator for the level of reading at the age of 8 and it all begins with unlocking the magic of learning. This did not surprise me as my research in my morning korero at the Nelson conference shows if you are a 9-year-old Maori boy and you cannot read or write, you have an 82 per cent chance of later ending up in jail.
My catch cry "Bring back the book" and "If you want to grow free range kids, feed them backyard stories" was well received by the 150 teachers and principals.
These staggering statistics are ever more the reason to invest in early intervention and one-on-one reading tutorials, as the invoice for these children runs into the millions over a lifetime of illiteracy.
So how much more information do we need? Have we reached overload? Apple will say not.
Already we are averaging a staggering 200 gawks globally a day at our phones - just in case. In case of what we need to ask? "This information explosion is taxing all of us as we struggle to come to grips with what we need to know and what we don't", according to Dr Daniel Levitin, author of Organized Minds - Thinking straight in the age of information overload.
In this age of information overload, every status update on Facebook, every tweet or text message is competing for resources in our brain with much more important things, and therein the size of the bite we have all taken out of the big Apple could well be measured.
There is a danger we are limiting our imaginations by constantly focusing on gadgetry, Dr Levitin claims.
Leading experts in body posture are pointing the bone at Apple and saying the instant generation are quickly becoming sedentary by sitting for hours on end gawking at a screen.
My daughter's Momma joke kicks in about how "Your Momma, she so fat she sat on her iPhone and it became an iPad".
From what I have listened to and read about, the promise of the iPhone to free us from time constraints has failed.
Infomania has taken away our free time; we now have less, not more. Some will say I can multi-task, download, up size and out-source far more efficiently than ever because of my iPhone and iPad.
The flip side to this is we are allowing our 100 billion neurons to sit on the side line and shut down, and that, for our children, could be a price that dwarfs the quarterly profit of Apple.
broblack@xtra.co.nz
-Tommy Wilson is a best-selling local author and writer.
