Does the Internet Help or Hurt Homework?

You are here: Home / Does the Internet Help or Hurt Homework?

---

Does the Internet Help or Hurt Homework?

---

Homework is the dreaded after school activity that no student can avoid. Depending on the assignment, it can be extremely time consuming. Any healthy teen will tell you that too much homework is a disaster to his social life. It’s hard to talk on the phone and also research a project. Not anymore! With the internet, the social teen can chat and research at the same time. The question then becomes this. Does the internet help or hurt homework?

It depends on the kid. Unfortunately, most teenagers are lazy. The internet very likely hurts their homework habits. Even if one tab is opened to a history research project, the other is probably open to Facebook. It doesn’t take a genius of a parent to guess which tab is getting more attention. In that case, computer time needs to be limited or heavily monitored. Limiting time could be limiting research. Monitoring computer usage can support research. The key is balance. If the homework assignment doesn’t require a computer, than the child doesn’t need to be near the machine. The only hardware he needs is the one attached to his neck.

Where kids are concerned, technology can be a real curse. A parent could find himself confiscating computers, phones, and game devices. Technology makes every piece of hardware an interchangeable device. Wii plays downloaded movies. Smartphones browse the internet. Computers call best friends. Kids get really smart when it comes to using all of this software, and really dumb when it comes to using it to do school work. There are a couple of ways to handle this. The first is to lay out the expectations and wait for your child to do the right thing. Since you know he won’t, you have to be willing to let him fail and suffer the consequences. The other way to control the situation is to be controlling. You may have a kid with consistently better grades, but he probably can’t make his own decision to save his life.

Acknowledge that technology is good, but accept that it can be bad if not properly managed.