by Nathan Cobb

About the author: Nathan Cobb writes feature articles for the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe daily newspaper.

It’s 9 p.m., and your kids are upstairs jockeying the family computer again, right? Maybe they’re cruising the Internet, playing games or dashing off bursts of e-mail, downloading files or writing code or checking out an electronic bulletin board or two.

Whatever they’re doing, they’ve likely lost track of time, and so have you. Has it been an hour? Three? Five"

The coming of the home computer has introduced yet another screen into the lives of children, bringing with it a brush fire of issues. Many of them are similar to those raised about television content, parental control, socialization, breadth of experience and so...