To answer the question regarding how CMC is being used in regards to Lifespan,  We found  a survey done by Zandil Group  of “What Kids do Online”.  They  found that most children from age 8 to 12 years old with home Internet access played games the most.  Email, chatting, and then school work fell close behind percentage wise.  Actions like shopping and entering contests were last on the list.  http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/demographics/article.php/5901_386591

     The range of views while researching were broad.  There are sites for children to play games, listen to music, color, read, learn about topics of interest, chat, it goes on and on.  Also there were many programs, like MOM for parents to control what their children viewed while online.  The most convincing view is that computer activities seem to help with children as they learn.  An article titled “So Much Fun, They Don’t Know They’re Learning” is about an after school program throughout the state of California that helps children with reading and writing with “hands-on experience using computers”.  This is used as a “means of promoting literacy skills that will help students succeed in school and in life”.  This style of learning  keeps them interested all the while they are learning the basic skills of  reading and writing.  This is also an advantage to the low-income areas.  It allows those children in “those high-risk after school hours” to have the opportunity to have access to computers where they otherwise might not. http://www.uctltc.org/news/2002/04/feature.php

    The most interesting discovery was that from another survey done by Grunwald Associates in 2003 that found that “10% or 2 million American children  (ages 6 - 17) who have internet access at home have their own personal web site.”  The survey is titled “Kids as Webmasters”.   We find the ages 6 - 8 the most interesting because that is such a young age.  It seems amazing that they are just coming out of  Kindergarten and they have their own Web page!  The Simmons Kids Study “found that kids who are online users play more sports than their peers.”  This goes against the myth in our text suggesting that computers can make children less social.

http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/software/article.php/3319651

http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/demographics/article.php/5901_425501