Asian adolescents suffering from character amnesia

DailyTech reports youth in Asian countries are forgetting how to write their ancient writing forms, due to their constant use of computers and cell phones with alphabet-based input systems. Li Hanwei, a 21 year-old university student in Hong Kong, said that the can remember the shape and pick out the character on her screen, but can't remember the strokes that you need to write it. The phenomenon is dubbed "character amnesia":

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.

...

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.