We journalists live in a new age of storytelling, with many new multimedia tools. Many young people don’t even realize it’s new. For them, it’s just normal.

This hit home for me as I was sitting with my 2-year-old grandson on a sofa over the Spring Festival holiday. I had brought a children’s book to read. It had simple words and colorful pictures — a perfect match for his age.

The fastest growing ‘new language’ in the world is emoticons (faces) and emojis (images of objects, which hail from Japan), which are one of the biggest changes caused by digital communications. “Facial expressions, visual presence and body language have always been vital to being a confident speaker, but now emojis are blurring the lines between verbal and written communication,” thinks Kermode, who adds that cavemen had early versions of emojis on the sides of their caves. “Pictures, cartoons or emojis are ‘shortcuts’ so we can be clear about what our message really means.”

South Korea has the highest rate of Internet addiction in the world and it is increasingly the country’s children who are spending every waking moment immersing themselves in fantasy role plays or gaming. In the remote mountains of South Korea, teenage Internet addicts are turning up for a 12-day boot camp.

Kyle Won’s addiction is out of control. He spends 10 hours a day on the Internet. Now Kyle’s smartphone is taken away. The teachers here do what they can to get them socializing again; for many, the only friends they have had are online. “I have relationships on the Internet and a real distance has grown with my real-life friends and I know it’s not good,” Kyle said. The teachers show them other possibilities and bring back dreams and hopes that have been buried by their addictions. “We teach them methods of managing their desire to use the Internet so that they can continue to use it when they go back home,” Shim Yong-chool, a teacher here, said. After just two days Kyle said it was helpful. He’s set a good example to others though he hasn’t reached the goal completely.

South Korean psychiatrists (精神病专家) are urging more action as they are finding evidence that too much screen time is a barrier to the developing minds. Professor Kang Seak Young from Dankook University said the addiction was damaging critical thinking. “It affects the frontal lobes (额叶) which are important to critical analysis,” Professor Kang said. “Reading a book and guessing what happens in the story next show activity in frontal lobes but playing popular computer games for a long time shows no activity.”

South Korea is one of the most wired nations on Earth, but it does have a cost. One in every ten kids is an addict, so the country is now learning how to manage its high-tech future to avoid more serious consequences.