"Doctors and government health officials should set limits, as they do for alcohol, on the amount of time children spend watching screens – and under-threes should be kept away from the television altogether, according to a paper in an influential medical journal published on Tuesday.

A review of the evidence in the Archives Of Disease in Childhood says children's obsession with TV, computers and screen games is causing developmental damage as well as long-term physical harm...

"Parents, who hope that giving their fat kids Nintendo Wii exercise games will sort them out, are fooling themselves, according to new research. A study undertaken by the Children's Nutrition Research Centre at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and published early this year in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics said that kids that play them are just as fat and unhealthy as ever.

"A paper published in Science claims that toddlers can spot if an electronic gadget is suffering from a hardware, software or operator effort.

"According to the organization, which represents the game industry, the average gamer today is 37 years old. Moreover, the average game buyer is 41 years old. Because of that, a greater number of parents are playing games with their children. The ESA said that 45 percent of parents play games with their kids "at least weekly.""

"On April 28th, the boy went to Chenzhou City in neighboring Hunan Province for the kidney removal surgery arranged by the broker. He was paid 22,000 yuan (an extra 2,000–) or $3,400 after his right kidney was taken out at Chenzhou’s famous No. 198 Hospital. His mom later found out (probably because he was rocking a new white iPad 2 and a huge scar) and called the police."

"Zuckerberg said he wants younger kids to be allowed on social networking sites like Facebook. Currently, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) mandates that websites that collect information about users (like Facebook does) aren't allowed to sign on anyone under the age of 13. But Zuckerberg is determined to change this.
"That will be a fight we take on at some point," he said. "My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age." But just how would Facebook's social features be used by younger children?"

"There have been plenty of anecdotal associations between gaming and obesity. Now Canadian and Danish researchers have tested the hypothesis that video game playing leads to increased spontaneous food intake; a true test of causation vs. correlation. Their conclusion?

"Parents need to get educated and get control of what is going on in their house. The campaign is a wake up call to parents that the internet makes a lousy babysitter and pornography is just a typo away. More resources and tools for parents can be found at http://www.xxxchurch.com/parents"

"Small children today are more likely to navigate with a mouse, play a computer game and increasingly – operate a smartphone – than swim, tie their shoelaces or make their own breakfast. This is according to a new ‘Digital Diaries’ study from Internet Security Company AVG (www.avg.com). AVG Digital Diaries is a series of studies looking at how children's interaction with technology has changed." | more

Shrink says leave them alone until age nine

A top shrink has called for a ban on children under the age of nine from using computers because the technology is scrambling damaging their brains. Talking to a conference of childcare specialists in the UK, psychologist and author Dr Aric Sigman said technology affected children's attentions spans and was harmful to their under-developed brains.