From Daily Tech

"Character Amnesia" result of computer-culture surge.

A recent survey indicates that the tech-savvy young people of China and Japan are experiencing a crisis of sorts. Thanks to their constant use of computers and mobile phones, many are becoming dependent on alphabet-based input systems and are starting to forget characters used in their ancient writing forms.

The China Youth Daily in April commissioned a poll that found 83 percent of 2,072 respondents admitted to having problems writing characters.  

A survey by the southern Chinese news portal Dayang Net, found that 80 percent of respondents had forgotten how to write some characters according to AFP and Tech Eye.

"I think it's a young people's problem, or at least a computer users' problem," said Zeng Ming, 22, from the southern Guangdong province in China.

The phenomenon, dubbed "character amnesia", occurs because many asian cultures use electronic input systems that are based on characters translated into the Roman alphabet. The user enters a word and the device offers matching characters.  Users don't need to be able to write a character in order to find a match.

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