Yes, it's the sad truth. Computers are becoming more powerful and they're making our brains less so, the internet is rotting the minds of the university generation. Online procrastination is a scourge with many students spending hours devising ways to avoid its virtual tentacles.
As the revision season gets fully under way around the country make sure you're watching out for these traps and you might just get that elusive first:
1. Wikipedia
Wikipedia. Is. Brilliant. For the first two and a half years of a degree. Sadly for all of us '(Wikipedia, 2012)' isn't exactly the greatest citation ever read and yet it's what appears at the top of most notes pages.
Whilst the cunning 'just sling in the references from the bottom of the article' ruse might get you through an assignment it's simply too much to remember when it comes to crowbarring the opinions of the finest minds the internet has to offer into 2,000 words on Neoliberalism.
2. Facebook
One of my friends has already shut her Facebook account down with a full six weeks to go until her first exam. It is simply the ultimate in combining procrastination with pointlessness. By collecting, collating and then bombarding you with gossip, photos and the most inane yet inexplicably fascinating other sites in the web Facebook is a portal that speeds up time and leaves you with a stress comedown that isn't worth the entire day you spent investigating the latest break-up, pictures of sweaty freshers in a dodgy club or the "13 Most Horrifying Birds in the Universe".
3. Memes
Internet memes - usually pictures with interchangeable captions - are the heroin of the internet. It is simply impossible to look at one. One leads to one more. And one more. "Just one more" rapidly morphs into a three hour mantra chanted in the head of all but those with the sternest of wills. As that first exam crawls ever nearer the irresistibility of a baby celebrating just grows and grows. Don't even get started on it kids; it isn't big and it isn't clever.
4. Reddit
A combination of facebook and memes for people without friends. My source tells me it's "so good" but his pasty face, inability to finish an essay in under three weeks and almost total failure to leave his room this year suggests it might just be intellectual kryptonite.
5. Anything else on the internet that isn't fully relevant university work
Welcome to the cop-out, catch-all section. The most extreme danger of modern internet is that it's so quick you're procrastinating before you even know it. No matter how highbrow the distraction, it's still a distraction.
Whether it's BBC News, Sky Sports, taking a test for Mensa, checking the weather forecast, Skyping your girlfriend on her birthday or writing a blog about procrastination you're still not revising. Give yourself a pat on the back anyway though, at least you're trying.