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"Study: PCs hurt students' grades":

You may want to stop and reconsider whether you think a home computer will help your child with reading and math.

A new Duke University study says North Carolina middle school students' test scores dropped after they got home computers, suggesting they spent more time playing "The Sims" than working practice math problems.

The study by Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy challenges the accepted wisdom that children who don't have computers at home are at a disadvantage compared with their wired classmates.

Actually, even if this were true, and I'm not sure that it is, I don't think parents should re-consider. Grades aren't the only outcome of spending time on a computer. The computer skills they learn - even on their own - has lead to amazing careers in computer science.

It seems to me that the real problem here is that while a computer, through the virtue of its interactivity, is a better babysitter than a TV set, it's still not a substitute for real parenting.