With kids ages 8 to 18 spending on average 44.5 hours per week in front of screens, parent are increasingly concerned that screen time is robbing them of real world experiences.

Nearly 23% of youth report that they feel "addicted to video games" (31% of males, 13% of females.) These are the results of a new study of 1,178 U. children and teens (ages 8 to 18) conducted by Harris Interactive (2007) that documents a national prevalence rate of pathological video game use. Douglas Gentile, Director of the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University reports, "Almost one out of every ten youth gamers shows enough symptoms of damage to their school, family, and psychological functioning to merit serious concern." Beyond gaming, kids are filling their free time with other Internet activities: social networking, instant messaging (IM), blogging, downloading etc. Kimberly Young, Director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, identified the following potential warning signs for children with pathological Internet use: Internet addiction among children is a growing concern.

The study’s lead author, Kate Daine, said: ‘There are no known online interventions to date that specifically target young people at risk of self-harm or suicide and yet we find that adolescents who self-harm are very frequent users of the internet.‘There are a number of questions that this poses: How do you realistically control these websites? How do you decide which ones need to be closed down?

And how do you stop them popping up again elsewhere?

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After a review of 14 global studies, a team from Oxford University believes the violent imagery and discussions of self-harm on the forums lead teens to normalise the behaviour and ‘act out’ what they have seen online. Sign up for your free Adelaide chat account now and meet hundreds of South Australia singles online! Mingle2's Adelaide chat rooms are full of fun, sexy singles like you. Sign up for your free Sunshine Coast chat account now and meet hundreds of Queensland singles online! Mingle2's Sunshine Coast chat rooms are full of fun, sexy singles like you.