That Evil Internet Stealing Our Children Again

from the ghost-stories dept

We keep hearing all of these scary studies about how children are getting devoured by an addictive internet. The latest comes out of South Korea, where internet connectivity is widespread. A new study asked kids about what they do in their spare time, leading to screaming headlines claiming that "students spend more time with computers, than with friends or family." Scary stuff, right? Except, it's not at all clear that the study actually says that. The study asked 28,000 students what they did in their free time -- but the results make it sound like these things are mutually exclusive. If you spend time on the internet, then you absolutely could never spend time with friends. It also never seems to consider that many kids who are using the internet are using it to chat with their friends and family. It's reasonable to be concerned, if there's real evidence of problems caused by too much of some kind of activity -- but this study doesn't prove that at all. All it really shows is that (surprise, surprise) kids use the internet.

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