Survey: Parents start to see TV, Internet the same

No TV for a week, the time-honored punishment for misbehaving children, has been enhanced. Now, parents are also withholding Internet access to punish their kids, further sign that the Web has become as important to families as television.

As the two mediums converge, parents are quickly coming to see TV and the Internet in similar ways and are seeking to limit their kids' access to both, according to a report out this week from researchers at the University of Southern California. The survey from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future found that two-thirds of parents say they restrict their kids' access to TV as punishment, a number that has barely budged over the past 10 years. But the percentage of parents who limit Internet access as a form of punishment has nearly doubled in the last decade. Among parents surveyed this spring, 57% said they withheld Web access to punish their kids. That is up from 32% in 2000.