Your kids are going to love this study out of Oxford: UK teenagers without the internet are ‘educationally disadvantaged’.
But we knew that already, or at least strongly suspected it. As Greg O’Brien wrote in his commentary last year, quoting NCTA president (and former FCC chief) Michael Powell:
I dare anyone to disagree with this statement: “A child without access to the Internet will find life increasingly difficult in the information age.”
Oxford was able to apply some scientific rigour based on a study of more than 1000 UK households. The authors of the study say that the benefits of using internet technologies “far outweigh” the perceived risks, expressed by parents.
The study warned that teenagers who do not have access to the internet in their home have a strong sense of being ‘educationally disadvantaged’. About 10% of the teenagers in the study did not have online connectivity at home, with most of these living in lower income households.
We have written about this extensively and now Oxford researchers have confirmed what we already suspected. All kids need access to a connected home computer. Computers in our schools and libraries were a great start, but we need to do more to give all our kids a chance to succeed in a digital world.