Mum`s the word
When it comes to the Internet at home, a 6-month AOL UK sponsored survey has found that it is very much Mum that rules the Internet roost, with the suspension of Internet privileges becoming the new form of discipline.
Of most interest:
- half of the mothers surveyed had moved the PC into the living room;
- a third spent time online with their children;
- four-fifths have used the PC as a substitute for the telephone;
- two-thirds of women use the Internet to research and diagnose family illnesses - in the study, one man was found who had been sent to hospital by his wife, together with notes and observations prepared by his wife, suggesting that he was suffering from a form of heart arrhythmia;
- a firth of women report getting up in the middle of the night to check things online, half reporting logging on before breakfast - this is blamed on auction websites and keeping up with gossip.
The author of the Demos Report (Broadband Britons), John Craig makes the valid point that it is every day Mums and Dads that now shape the Internet.
And that it's no longer geeky to do so.
