Well it's articles like this that make one wonder how having constant electronic stimulation will effect todays generation.
Toys and TV already effected the last. I guess it's about smart parenting. When I was young our computer only had one game on it. After I got bored to that, I invented my own games using microsoft paint. First I draw this miniature submarine in minecraft style. Then single clicks of that spray paint tool were depth charges. I think I should thank my parents for letting me wait a year for Age of Empires. I guess my point is that it's not bad to have tools, it's bad to have too much entertainment.
Back when I didn't have internet and hell you can only play so much Roller Coaster Tycoon, I a) got extremely good at hearts, b) got extremely good at freecell, and c) drew hundreds of fantasy worlds in paint. Loved paint. A more versatile program has never been created. Messed around with the command prompt, wrote a hundred pages of a book when I was 12 (password protected ten years ago, god help me, so I can't even read it now), and gained a healthy respect for degaussing.
I don't know if you've had much interaction with kids lately, but it's kind of strange seeing very young children, even toddlers manipulating these things. My cousin's kid is all of 3 and she knows how to use the iPad to watch whatever her shows are. Giving a kid that kind of control so early on in bound to have some sort of impact. That said, in my time as a language teacher, there were a few times I wish I had a length of hickory in the room with me just to give some of those kids that deserved it, a taste of the not-so-dearly-departed analog world.
When I was growing up my parents limited my TV watching time and there wasn't distractions like cell phones or iPads. Granted this was the early '00s and there was gameboys and the like but I was limited to a certain amount of time on those as well. Instead I spent a lot of time reading different books. Nothing particularly advanced or impressive, just normal books kids read. But I feel that time spent reading was also time spent building vocabulary, imaginative, and analytical skills. If kids today are raised with cell phones and iPads I feel they will be missing out and it will subsequently hinder their development. I too wish teachers were allowed to give a slap upside the head to a kid who deserved it, but alas those times are gone. Teacher don't have any effective tools to discipline kids beside threatening to tell the principal if they don't stop. It's almost pathetic.
I wouldn't say that they have no tools but you're right, they have definitely been hobbled, especially in the U.S. It's terrible the way that kids are coddled and limited in terms of play and pushed so hard to excel in other areas, all while being told that each and every one of them is special and unique. It's strange that so much money goes into developmental research on children and yet the application of those findings seems to be lacking in society at-large.