Also at home, a common concern of parents is children accessing harmful content, such as advertisements for sugary food. A related threat is the excessive use of computers for entertainment, which can take away from time spent on schoolwork. A recent study from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research suggests unsupervised Internet access in the home can lead to negative consequences in children’s math and reading scores [ 3]. A way of countering these negatives is to provide children and parents with enough structure and literacy on media sources to guide children toward meaningful computer use. Another way to move children away from passively experiencing media and games with preset scenarios is to provide them with technologies that enable them to be media authors. Technologies that appeal to their strong interests and give them the tools to be creative can prove quite entertaining.

As part of information literacy, it is also important to teach children how to gain insight from the large amounts of digitized data they will eventually access in their lifetime. We already use digitized data to find inexpensive flights, movies to watch, and homes for sale. In spite of these advances, we currently do not even have appropriate tools for children to search the Internet, let alone gain insight from large amounts of data, so much research remains to be done.

 

older Adults

Photograph by Keef Andrew

Older adults make up an increasing portion of the world’s population, with developed regions leading the way and other regions quickly catching up. The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050 there will be two billion peo-