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Strollerderby
Mom and Dad Ruin the Internet
Well parents, you’ve done it again. You’ve ruined your kids’ fun. This time, it’s the Internet.
In a new survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, researchers have found kids are moving away from blogging while the number of adults is climbing. As for Twitter?
Tweeting’s for old farts, according to the teens.
The survey shows the number of kids blogging has effectively been halved since 2006, from twenty-eight percent to fourteen, and just eight percent of kids eight through seventeen bother with Twitter.
The findings point to one especially good bit of news for parents: our kids aren’t that interested in sharing their stories with the world. They prefer anonymity, or at the very least closed networks such as Facebook or Myspace (still the bastion of teenagehood). Because that – not surprisingly – is where the jumps have been. The number of social networking kids has grown from fifty-five percent to seventy-three.
Some more good news? Our kids aren’t spending their huge internet time just frittering it away. The survey found more than half of the kids are getting news online, and thirty-one percent get health, dieting or physical fitness info from the net.
A fair number (seventeen percent) also said they’re turning to the internet to get information on topics they feel uncomfortable broaching with a physical person – from drugs to sexual health.
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2 Comments
[...] already driven our kids off the blogs, and now we’re destroying Facebook for our kids because we’re actually ON [...]
Another Way Parents Ruin the Internet | Droolicious commented on Mar 09 10 at 12:27 pmArizela commented on Feb 26 10 at 7:14 amAnybody else concerned that kids are getting dietary advice from the internet? Considering how often I’m bombarded with fad diet, untested herbal supplement, and dangerous weight loss schemes on the ‘net, I find this 31% rather disturbring.
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