Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

Thompson writes about how the Internet does not actually have a negative effect on writing. Thompson talks about a study done by a professor at Standford University, the study shows that young people today are writing a lot more then young people without the Internet. Although the writing are not always essays and long articles, the writing that takes place online added up to 38 percent of the students writing on average. The study showed that the writing would change depending on who the audience was, and that students would not write essays they were excited or enthused about because there was no audience except for the professor. They had no personality coming across in their writing because the only point was to get a good grade.
Questions:
1. Does the audience really change the way people write and the tone of the writing?
2. Do people actually write more because of the internet?
3. Is writing in short hand and text messaging "language", hurting the way people write in general?