The NYT questions whether the internet is harming or helping the literacy of teens. The graphic is hysterical, in part because it’s exactly the opposite in my house. While the vast majority of what I do on the internet is reading, with the occasional foray into video clips and the odd video game, what’s really at stake is WHAT I’m reading. If I run out of book news, science articles, and current affairs at the newspapers I love, I am in danger of sliding down down down that slippery slope into prurient celebrity schadenfreude. Is it still reading if the article is illustrated with a shot of Britney’s crotch?

As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Conn., crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.

At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.