When you hear "children" and "the Internet" uttered in the same sentence, it's most likely some concerned citizen talking about shielding innocent eyes from X-rated Web sites or protecting kids' privacy online.
But while much has been made of the dangers of Internet pornography and online predators, far less attention has been given to the long-term educational and developmental impact the online world will have on this incredibly wired generation - the first to grow up with the Internet as part of their daily lives.
The kids are definitely online. According to Media Metrix, teens aged 12 to 17 spend an average of 303 minutes online per month. A recent report conducted by Circle 1 Network and SpectraCom, "The Future of the Internet According to Kids," said that 70 percent of 1,000 children surveyed said they found the Internet exciting, and 73 percent intended to be online even more in the coming years.
The big, unresolved question: Is the Net a mind-enhancing experience or a mind-numbing waste of time?
The mind-numbing faction has been vocal in recent months. US advocacy group, the Alliance for Childhood, recently released a study titled "A Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood," which takes a neo-Luddite stance when it comes to technology and learning, especially for young children. The report concludes that computers can be isolating, can dampen a child's intellectual curiosity, and may even cause physical harm, such as stress injuries and eyestrain. These findings echo the sentiments of author Cliford Stoll, a University of California at Berkeley professor who has decried the overuse of computers and technology in schools.
Dr. Larry Cuban, an education professor at Stanford University and former president of the American Educational Research Association who has signed the Alliance for Childhood's related call for action, notes that some drill-and-practice programs can improve scores on standardised tests. But he's convinced that such basic applications represent the limits of computers' educational usefulness.
"Other than drill-and-practice programs, there is no clear body of evidence that students' sustained use of multimedia machines, the Internet, word processing, spreadsheets and other popular applications has any impact on academic achievement," Cuban says.
But according to others in the academic community, the Internet's long-term impact on the intellectual and social development of this emerging hyper-tech-savvy generation is still largely unknown. After all, the medium is still new compared with, say, the printed word, and even long-time Web kids have been logging on for five years or so at most.
"There's lots of hype on both the positive and negative sides that is just really silly," says Amy S. Bruckman, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing in Atlanta. "On the positive side, people say, 'The Internet and technology will make our children instant geniuses,' and on the negative side is this idea that the Internet is destroying our children and our families."
