The percentage of homes that now own a computer has risen over the years. The steady growth of the Internet and the services it can provide has been one the major factors in increased computer sales.

But the way we use computer at home does not mirror what computers are capable of doing.

Games.
A large percentage of children use their computers to play games. The Internet has now made it easier for children to gain access to thousands of games instantly. Despite these games being far inferior in content and graphics than retail games or games produced for the latest consoles children find them very addictive.

Addiction to computers or computer games is not a recognised condition like alcohol or drug addiction, despite the symptoms being very similar.
Those addicted to computers or games will often spend long periods of time playing and show no care for the amount of hours they have played for. Lack of sleep and long hours of concentrating starts to affect their personality and behaviour. Often they will become aggressive if they are stopped from playing or confronted about the amount of time they spend playing. Eventually it starts to have an effect on their work and social life and they tend to isolate themselves from others and social contact. This can also have an effect on their health with one of the most common symptoms being weight gain.

If you think your child is addicted then there are websites with helpful information or phone numbers to speak to somebody and get help.

Instant messaging.
Instant messaging first appeared in 1999 and allowed people to communicate instantly via computer using the Internet or a computer network. The limited speed and capability of the Internet meant that it was restricted to text. Once the technology and Internet advanced it then became possible to use video and sound as well.

Today’s society has a preference for sending messages via text instead of talking directly to people.
Often children will spend all night sending messages to people they have been at school with all day and mostly talking about nothing of importance.
While instant messaging may appear a cheap and easy way of communicating with people it is having an adverse effect on society. Texting removes emotion from a conversation making it impersonal. This can lead to people often saying things by text that they would not say in person and then unable to deal with the ramifications later in person. With physical emotions and body language removed from a conversation it can be difficult for people to comprehend if a person is joking or being sarcastic and misunderstand a conversation.

With children preferring to text and e-mail instead of communicating directly they fail to learn at an early age the skills required to communicate face to face with people and instead become withdrawn and reluctant to communicate with others directly.

Social networking sites.
Over the last few years social networking sites have become extremely popular. Millions of users everyday login to exchange personal information and share with the world what they are doing.

The ability to view other people’s comments, photos and messages and add your own comments, messages and join in interactive games can become very addictive and time consuming.

The Internet
The Internet is single handedly responsible for the increase in the amount of computers in homes. Many people had never considered owning a computer until finding out about the Internet.

The rapid growth and technical advances of the Internet has changed the way we live. Access to instant information and global communication places the Internet in history along with the wheel, telephone and the television.

But instead of using the Internets vast collection of information for learning most children use the Internet for games messaging and social networking site, or watching music videos on youtube.

Photos.
Photography as a hobby was once limited to only the rich. The cost of a decent camera plus the cost of film and development stopped most people even trying.

The invention of digital cameras changed that. With just a computer and some free software everybody could do what professional photographers could only dream of 10 years ago.

Using Paint.net and Google’s Picasa3 (see our free software section) and a cheap digital camera (see our buyers guides) your child could be producing their own portfolio of photos. The only other thing they will need to experiment with photos and produce artistic effects is time and patience.

Drawing.
Most people have an idea how to draw, but their hand to eye coordination lets them down.
Using computer programs like Paint.net and SketchUp (see our free software section) it is possible for anyone to create great pictures.

Using the presentation programs they can create presentations at home that they can then use at school to help explain homework.

The Internet.
The Internet is filled with free material to help children with their education.
Some of it is information with pictures to help with projects and homework. But others have games which help learning through fun.

Give them some real life tasks to do such as creating invites for a party, taking photos at an event and then downloading them and adjusting the photos.

Encourage them to do extra stuff for homework using Photostory or PowerPoint that they can show in class. Every child has their own e-mail account that they can use to e-mail the work into school simply by sending an e-mail to themselves and adding the work as an attachment.