The time is ripe to assess the
impact of home computer use on child and adolescent development. Over the past
few years, a growing number of U.S. households have added electronic games, home
computers, and the Internet to other technologies — the telephone, radio, TV,
and stereo system — that consume children's time. Furthermore, the Annenberg
Public Policy Center has reported that among U.S. households with children aged
8 to 17, 60% had home computers, and children in 61% of households with
computers had access to Internet services; in other words, 36.6% of all
households with children had Internet services, more than twice the percentage
of that in 1996. When a national sample of children and teenagers was asked to
choose which medium to bring with them to a desert isle, more children from 8 to
18 chose a computer with Internet access than any other medium.
Surveys of parents suggest that they buy home computers and subscribe to
Internet access to provide educational opportunities for their children, and to
prepare them for the “information-age. Although they are increasingly concerned
about the influence of the Web on their children and express disappointment over
their children using the computer for activities such as playing games and
browsing the Internet to download lyrics of popular songs and pictures of rock
stars, they generally consider time wasted on the computer preferable to time
wasted on TV, and even consider children without computers to be at a
disadvantage ….
That’s is very harmful for children…