People mistake change for a lot of things - in this case, loss of intelligence.

Consider the picture you provided. The writer says "zomg the geekologie writer is mad handsome, lol ;-)" which means, in "correct" writing, "Oh my goodness, the Geekologie writer is incredibly attractive." The only real changes here are spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and loss of abbreviations and emoticons. In fact, I would say the "correct" sentence has lost much of its vigor and emotion, due to the intranslateable ";-)" ("LOL" and "ZOMG" are themselves translateable, but don't quite convey the same meaning and emotion when written out as "oh my goodness" and "haha"). And the sentence "I dunno bc dat gurl aint da 1 I wuld b wid", that isn't anything less than "I don't know, because that girl isn't the one I'd be with," with different spelling, etc.

What I'm getting at is that we are conveying the exact same information through whichever way we write - in fact, "txtspk" may be providing even more information than our current system of writing (emotion, inside jokes via misspellings, etc). While punctuation and capitalization may look nice, we don't really need them in order to communicate. Do we need to say "comma" every time we pause in our sentence? Is capitalization required in conversation?

This is like trying to argue that the Irish are supposedly less intelligent because they use the same word for "green" and "blue," or that the Inuits are more intelligent because of how many words for snow they have (which is, by the way, false - they use descriptive suffixes in their language, they don't create technically new words for different types of snow). They present their language differently, but it does not mean they have any less reasoning capabilities.

The other point that you bring up, that Twitter only allows 140 characters, is actually something I would be concerned about. I'm sure there are studies being done on the ADHD nature of the internet - always switching tabs, talking to many people at once, always having your eye on the news for whatever's coming up next - but I'm not quite sure what the findings are on those.

The last point - privacy - has nothing really to do with our intelligence, but I think is a valid point to bring up. There are people who would argue that our social networking capabilities today have indeed brought us closer, introduced us to people we would otherwise never meet, let us experience other cultures, and more. Others would say we are losing our freedom by giving up so much information, and that we shouldn't have to be constantly tracked and connected, that we should be able to disconnect and do what we like without half the world knowing. I think that's a preference at the moment, really.

I don't know if it's making us dumber, but it's certainly making us more impatient and perhaps even more impulsive, which could be misconstrued as a lowered understanding of logic and wisdom.

On the contrary, I think many social networking outlets are providing the public with more opportunity to stay informed. For example, for many people who don't keep up with any newspaper or news websites, the Twitter trending topics act as a way to spur knowledge of current events for those who are typically uninformed.

If anything, I think social networking as restored a new interest in information. Its created a sort of info-junkie machine. Before Facebook and MySpace there was no way to know so much about so many people. Whether this seemingly banal flow of relatively useless information (because, really, when are you really ever going to NEED to know how much that girl you went to high school with loves Twilight) is a good or a bad thing is open for debate. The point is that information, if used correctly, is a door to knowledge, which based on HuffPo's view of being "dumb" would seem to contradict.

Don't no if's making us dumr, but I do know that information/social networking sites - like Mahalo - do INCREASE our level of intelligence.

I think it's a reflection of, not the cause of. As far as Twitter spell etc. that goes back as far as 20 years ago when kids had only pagers to communicate on and shorthand made sense. Checkout old folios of Shakespeare, spelling was as fluid then as it is now. Shakespeare himself spelled his name three different ways. As to the inane banter people post, THAT I believe is a reflection of people's loss of interest in thinking, not the cause of their intellectual laziness. Back in the early days of the scientific revolution, mathematical proofs used to be published with the same zeal we real Time or Newsweek, because people expected a lively dinner table discussion. The fare on TV has been eroding people's taste for over 50 years. Notice how the California accent has replaced Midwestern as being recognized as "American". It's because the world over watched American entertainment.
Facebook didn't create that, it only shows a trend

Yes, or you could say we are not becoming as smart as older generations. I have also heard many stories of teens getting busted because they post pictures drinking on sites such as facebook. Some people are smart enough not to, and in some cases, it cost people their job. Another point I'd like to make is that people are getting worse at spelling. After typing in those shorten sentences for so many years, we can forget how to spell basic words. This falls more in the twitter and texting category. As far as blogging goes, it can go either way. Some schools use blogs for class writting projects to introduce a fun way to write. If people can make good sentences in their blogs it would be helping us. As far as privacy goes, people can make many mistakes. It can also make people feel left out if they post that they are going to a party or wedding, and you see your not invited. Sometimes the day after everyone will post fun night, and when you see all your friends like their comment, it could hurt. This is a hard to solve problem because no one wants to give up these sites.