Did the internet ruin your summer?

Did you notice that there appeared to be less children playing outdoors during the summer this year?

 

It didn’t cross my mind until my son commented this week that he didn’t mind going back to school because there was no one around to play with. He had a point – there were certainly fewer youngsters out playing football on our local green in comparison with previous summers.

So where were they all hiding? In a sure sign that the economy is picking up, some of them had gone abroad with their families – but that hardly accounts for the full eight weeks or so of the school break.

Was it possible that many of our children were lured indoors by their growing dependency on the internet?

The results of a new study published by Stop Procrastinating, a productivity website, seems to confirm as much.

The survey of 2,000 parents across the country found that a majority are concerned by their children’s internet use during the summer and say that it will cause conflict during family holidays.

It found that parents are also concerned by their inability to block their children’s access to the internet during the summer.

Among its findings were:
•68 per cent worried their children use the Internet for too long during the summer holidays.
•52 per cent said their children were less active because they used social media instead of playing with friends.
•48 per cent worried their children didn’t seek out sociable activities during the summer.
•62 per cent said their children’s use of smart devices would cause conflict and stress during their family holiday.
•56 per cent said that their children read less over the summer than they did when they were children. They blamed the internet for this.

While the internet can be a valuable learning resource, our reliance on smartphones and tablets has become worrying. Social networking has replaced meaningful human contact and even those with hundreds of so-called Facebook friends can, in reality, be lonely and isolated.

Parents are under mounting pressure to buy the latest gadgets for their kids, unwittingly exposing them to online violence or pornography.

Despite dire warnings about childhood obesity, kids are literally left to their own devices instead of engaging in sporting activities.

It may be an inconvenient truth, but we all know that the internet is a problem when it comes to our children. The question is: what are we willing to do about it?