Research on the relationship between internet use and grades in the US

a few interesting points from the monitor on psychology looking at "Children and the Internet: It's fun, but does it make you smarter? www.apa.org/monitor/nov07/itsfun.html :

"In her research, published in a 2006 Developmental Psychology (Vol. 42, No. 3, pages 429–435) special section on Internet use, Jackson studied 140 urban children as part of HomeNetToo, a longitudinal field study designed to assess the effects of Internet use in low-income families. Most of the child participants were African American and around 13 years old; 75 percent lived in single-parent households with an average annual income of $15,000 or less. The children were also underperforming in school, scoring in the 30th percentile on standardized reading tests at the beginning of the study.

Jackson and her colleagues provided each family with a home computer and free Internet access. The researchers automatically and continuously recorded the children's Internet use, and participants completed periodic surveys and participated in home visits.

They found that children who used the Internet more had higher scores on standardized reading tests after six months, and higher grade point averages one year and 16 months after the start of the study than did children who used it less.

"A big challenge to researchers here is that we are dealing with a major generational gap—we are still struggling to catch up with evolving technology and how young people are using it," says Elisheva Gross, PhD, of the Children's Digital Media Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The publication lag of scholarly research is also at odds with a technology that's changing and expanding by the day.

"Especially when you talk about books published on this topic, they are historical documents at this point," says Gross.

Research in Africa by Rocare has come to the same conclusion. All points that "Everything bad is good for you : how today's popular culture is actually making us smarter" by Steven Johnson. Hopefully more evidence like this will demonstrate the complexity of understanding how the Internet is having an impact on our lives and society and help to debunk some of the recent myths about how the Internet is having a detrimental effect on children.