Posted 09/09/09 at 08:13:43 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Ninth graders at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, were greeted by some social networking advice from President Obama on Tuesday. He advised them to not let their guard down on social networking sites such as Facebook, for the ghosts of their gay abandon could come back to haunt them later.

“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook,” Obama told a group of 40 ninth graders. “Because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.  And when you’re young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. ”

Recent studies have shown that an increasing number of hiring managers closely examine the social networking profiles of job candidates. So, a bit of caution on the part of these kids will at least ensure that they don’t remain unemployed because of social networking gaffes.

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Posted 07/10/09 at 07:00:38 AM by Paul Lilly

This probably won't come as much of a shocker, but according to a new study from Nielson Online, our impressionable youth are hopping on the Internet at a much faster rate than either their parents or siblings.

More specifically, the study found that the Internet was populated with nearly 16 million kids between the age of 2 and 11 last May. That's an 18 percent growth rate for that age group in the past five years, compared to 10 percent growth among all Internet users.

Not only are kids tapping into cyber-space more often, but they're also staying connected longer than before. According to the study, children logged 11 hours of online time in May, up from 7 hours in May of 2004.

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Posted 08/19/08 at 12:18:40 PM by Pulkit Chandna

The most popular game in the social activist fraternity and political circles currently happens to be “blame the videogames.” However, there are ardent gamers and researchers galore to even out the scales. Once again, fresh studies have reinforced the value of games in enhancing cognitive and perceptual skills among children; creating a breed of hyper-dexterous surgeons; and bolstering scientific reasoning capabilities in gamers. All said, there is a slight blemish with one of the studies having found that violent games lead to more violent behavior among gamers. Make the "jump" for all the justification you need to keep playing games.

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Posted 06/30/08 at 02:26:18 PM by Thomas MacDonald

We’re at a point in history when, if gamers are to maintain credibility, we need to acknowledge both the good and bad in our passion. Grand Theft Childhood ($25, Simon & Schuster) by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson is a fair and comprehensive study of games and violence, and we would do well to pay attention to its conclusions.

Those conclusions, and Tom's own, after the jump.

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