A Michigan study on home internet use by low-income families has concluded that Internet use doesn't negative effect the social skills of adults - but it might improve the test scores of their children:
HomeNetToo is a research project designed to study how low-income families use the Internet at home. In particular, the researchers are interested in what makes people use the Internet and what effects its use has on people.
"We found no evidence that using the Internet at home reduces social contacts or undermines communication with family or friends," said Linda A. Jackson, professor of psychology at MSU and a principal investigator on the recently completed three-year study...
The researchers were most excited by their findings related to children.
"HomeNetToo children who spent more time online using the Web performed better in school after one year than those who spent less time online," Jackson said. "It appears that the text-based nature of most Web pages is causing children to read more, resulting in improvements in grade point averages and performance on standardized tests of reading achievement."
There's more than a simple correlational effect going on here, because the participants, all of whom had little to no computer experience, were given home computers, Internet service, and technical support for 16 months, and it appears before-and-after measurements were taken. There's no control group, but this experimental design is sufficient for showing the effect of targeted intervention on these groups. I'm not at all surprised that the kids are reading more (although I'm sure the parents had to figure out how to control what the kids were reading pretty quickly...)
Posted by kswygert at July 28, 2003 03:35 PM