According to research seventy percent of households currently have a computer. Since the beginning of the internet there have been several serious questions on its affect on children. The most frequently asked of these questions is what affect does the internet have on children's cognitive development? Mainly what they are looking for is whether the internet has a positive or negative effect on children cognitively. Most of the research on this topic shows that how the internet affects the child cognitively depends on what type of content the child uses the computer for. What we need to understand is that the internet is a new social environment in which universal adolescent issues such as identity, sexuality, and a sense of self worth are played in a virtual world in ways that are both old and new. We need to see the internet as providing researchers with a window into the secret world of adolescent peer culture, even as it offers young people a new screen for the projection of adolescent development issues.

According to information gathered from the article Children, Adolescents, and the Internet: A New Field of Inquiry in Developmental they state the reason that the internet is important to developmentalists is due to their need to understand how children live in a new, massive, and complex virtual universe, even as they continue to live their lives in the real world. When looking at research from Jackson et al. we find that the internet also has a positive effect on children academically. The study done by Jackson et al demonstrates that there is a positive impact of home internet access on the reading achievement of low income, mostly African American children. In contrast to television the interactivity of the internet takes away the viewer role that TV employs, therefore making it much more beneficial to the cognitive development of a child.

The article that we read stated that adolescents most commonly use the internet for communication purposes. According to the article we looked at the area of social development deals with five important focuses of adolescent development. These fives focuses are identity, self-worth, sexuality, health behaviors, and leadership. Each one of these five areas of development is greatly affected by extended periods of internet use. In the article they discuss that time spent on the internet varies from use to gratification. In the article they question whether or not the use of internet for gratification is considered pathological or healthy.

Currently research into children’s understanding of complex artifacts such as the internet is scarce. To study their understanding of the internet challenges the boundaries between the traditional categories of cognitive development, social-cognitive development, and social development. The internet is a gigantic but almost invisible universe that includes thousands of networks, millions of computers, and billions of users throughout the world. Many of these users are children and adolescents. The internet needs to be seen as a source of new methods for developmental research, as well as a new research environment that requires the development of new methodologies.

Overall we have found that the internet has a positive effect on children when discussing academics. However, according to our author Yan, we must look at the internet as a knife. Since a knife can not be adherently good or bad, the internet is much the same way. All we can do is simply document how the internet is used. If used positively it will most certainly help a child development positively in terms of cognition. However, if used poorly the internet will surely hurt a child in more ways then just cognitively. From our findings we can come to the conclusion the how a child is affected cognitively by the internet depends on what the child uses the internet for.