There's an upside to kids' obsessive computer use - it's keeping them off the road.
Ah, parenting. If something is making your life easier, like lots of television for the youngsters while you try to fill in your tax return, it'll most certainly make life harder in another way, such as a level of advertising that appears to reprogram their frontal lobes.
In short, there are no shortcuts. Facebook, which keeps teenagers amused for hours, is another modern convenience that giveth with one hand and taketh away with another. Stops non-stop gabbing on the phone and endless loops of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? Affirmative. But it's also a cesspit of predatory sexual grooming, bullying, and drug-recipe-sharing shenanigans, according to constant media reports.
Even if what you're posting on or talking about isn't lurid, social networking is an addiction that can be all-consuming for people of all ages. As someone who can say, a la Princess Diana, that there are "three people" in my marriage - myself, my husband, and his iPhone - I can attest to its seductive sway.
A survey by British digital marketing agency dnx found that about 3 per cent of Britons are so ruled by technology they can go for several days without interacting with fellow human beings.