Introduction- Jason Raley
Since 1984, the percentage of children with home access to computers has steadily increased from 15 percent to 76 percent in 2003. In addition, the percentage of children who use the internet at home rose from 22 percent in 1997, and up to 42 percent in 2003.
It seems that the research done clearly shows that spending a lot of time on the internet can have both negative and positive effects on young people. Benefits of computer use have been observed, they typically depend on a variety of factors and the most influential is defiantly the subject matter involved. There are many ways in which the internet can be a helpful tool and uses of the Internet have shown an improvement in academic achievement among low-income youth and a way to provide health information to youth living in developing countries. Internet forums and chat rooms provide a powerful vehicle for bringing together adolescents with the same interests. Online interactions provide essential social support for otherwise isolated adolescents, but these online forums may also encourage self-injurious behavior and add lethal behaviors to the already established adolescent self-injurers. The proper use of the internet can produce extraordinary results and also extremely negative effects when utilized in a certain environment. The Web is primarily text. Thus, more time on the Web means more time spent reading, which may explain the increase in reading test scores that most students have experienced from extended internet use. The internet can and will be used more and more in the future of education and learning there are methods currently being developed to increase other skills besides reading that might not have been previously been explored. One of the main key points to the internet is it can also be a good educational tool for hard-to-reach populations of children in struggling countries.
