Kids of being coming increasingly addicted to the Internet, claims a story in today’s New York Daily News. One of the “addicted” is a Brooklyn Heights pre-teen.
New York Daily News: The Curse of Internet Addiction: When Nathan turned 11, his parents bought him his first computer, to keep in his bedroom in their Brooklyn Heights townhouse. They thought it would help with his schoolwork and foster a sense of discovery. Three months later, his grades began slipping, he was less and less social and he was sleeping less than six hours a night. He was up at night, roaming on the Internet. The computer, his well-intentioned parents decided, had to go. Nathan is only one of countless adolescents who suffer from Internet addiction, letting hours slip away unnoticed while using E-mail, chatting via instant messages and surfing the Web. While the Internet is a powerful and useful tool, it comes with a heavy responsibility, one that parents must bear in mind…Once Nathan’s computer was gone from his room, “I sent him outside to play and said he wasn’t allowed to come home until he was exhausted,” his mother says. “I was so sick of seeing him inside, on the computer playing games, I would do anything to change that behavior.” It may not be the popular choice, Willard concedes, but “limiting your child’s electronic use and pushing peer interaction is the first positive step.”
