Has the Internet Helped or Hindered Literacy?

Up until now, most useful information on the Internet has been text-based. Due to the massive indexing-efforts of Google and Co, this information is easily accessible. Before long, the same indexing will be applied to non-textual information. During the 'text era', we were all encouraged to speed-read and absorb written concepts. The written-word however, seems to have taken a hit. Endless blogs suggest that the young have created new languages, rather than adopt any of those historically on offer. Will this eventually lead to a dumbing down of our literacy-skills, where every generation feels a need to invent their own 'wheels'.