All I know is that I can see computers being as much part of the home as the TV and video. It links you to other people. You can contact people without leaving home. And you could meet lasses and all that on it. More and more, children in the world's developed countries are spending ever greater amounts of time working on and playing with computers of various descriptions.
Optimists foresee new opportunities for democratic and community participation.
ICTs are seen as encouraging global awareness and open communication, as enabling more independent, self-directed searching for information as well as facilitating teamwork skills and transferable technological expertise of crucial to the workplaces of the future. At the same time, pessimists lament the end of childhood, innocence and respect for authority. More and more schools are investing in ICT, giving it ever greater weight across the curriculum, while the numbers gaining access at home are growing rapidly. Among those users, around one third learned to use it through school and a similar number learned to use it through parents. Yet despite widespread speculation regarding the use of the Internet by children and young people specifically, little empirical research has yet been conducted to inform either theory or policy.