Thankfully the fact that there is only one computer in my house that I’m always on saves me from worrying about my daughter being online too much but acording to a study released today by the University of Southern California, many parents feel their hijos are in front of the computer too much.

21 percent of adult Internet users with children believe the kids are online too long, compared with 11 percent in 2000.About 80 percent of the children say the Internet is important for schoolwork, although three-quarters of the parents say grades haven’t gone up or down since they got Internet access. Forty-seven percent of the adults say they have withheld Internet use as a form of punishment

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The biggest enemy in the eyes of parents remains the boob tube aka television. Almost half of the parents surveyed via telephone in English and Spanish complained that their kids watched too much TV and that taking away TV privileges was a bigger punishment than taking away the internet.

It would be really interesting to survey these same parents as to their own internet and television habits considering that children model behavior they see at home. Are these same complaning parents always online (like me)? Is the television always on, even just as background noise or as a virtual babysitter?

The study also looked at why people weren’t online. Most of those who weren’t logged on said they weren’t because of a lack of a working computadora. We’ve written about the racial gap in internet usage and access and wonder how many of those are people of color.

Via / Yahoo!News