or those who blame the Internet for everything wrong with the younger generation, here’s a nugget to break your illusions, tossed your way by the USC Annenberg’s Digital Future Project.

“The Internet has little or no impact on time spent with family or friends, or on sleeping, exercising, or most other personal activities (other than watching television),” the university found. “In fact, the Digital Future Project continues to show that Internet users are often more socially active than non-users, and are less alienated from others. And because of e-mail and instant messaging, the Internet has become a useful tool to build relationships. Internet users communicate with others more, not less.”

Paste this quote on your fridge door if you continue to be overly restrictive on your children’s time online. The key word here is “overly”. Concerns about obsessive time spent online and about who they are communicating with remain valid.

The nugget was contained in the new report on its studies by the Digital Future Project. And now ladies and gentlemen, here’s the Project’s top ten list of trends observed since the opening of the Internet to public use a decade ago:

1. The “digital divide”, which describes the lack of access to the Internet by Hispanics, blacks and seniors, has closed in the US. The university’s Digital Future Project found that about 75 percent of Americans can access the Internet from some location. The hours they spend online has grown, on average, to 12.5 hours a week. However a new divide is forming between those who have speedy broadband and those who use traditional telephone modem access.

2. The Internet has changed media habits, with users “buying” their time to go online from the time they previously spent watching television. The more experience users have with the Internet, the less television they watch.

3. The credibility of the Internet is dropping, although most users continue to trust information on the Web sites they visit regularly, and on pages created by established media and the government.

4. Online buying habits are just beginning to change, although concerns about credit card security while buying online remain extremely high. In 2001, Internet users bought online about 11 times each year. Now they buy online about 30 times per year. As Internet use increases, buying online increases dramatically.

5. The perception that the Internet is for nerds is officially dead. Since the beginning of the Digital Future Project, the university studies have found that going online did not put the social lives of users at risk.

6. Concerns remain about privacy and security.

7. The Internet has become the most important source of information for users. It is the primary place they go for research, general information, hobbies, entertainment listings, travel, health, and investments.

8. The benefits and drawbacks of the Internet for children are only now being fully addressed. “Perhaps the greatest conflicts about the Internet emerge in our exploration of how adults perceive the role of the Internet in their children’s lives,” the report states. Does the Internet help my children with their schoolwork? Children say “Yes”. Does the Internet improve grades? Adults say “No”.

9. E-mail is still the single most important reason people go online but it is also a great irritation. “One of the more interesting findings in the Digital Future Project is that we may be seeing the first hints that the most experienced users are not going to answer e-mail as often as they used to. New users think e-mail needs to be answered faster than do the experienced users.”

10. Access to broadband is changing entirely our relationship with the Internet. Modem use is disruptive, while “always on” broadband use is integrative, the report states. Broadband users spend more time online than users who connect to the Internet by modem. The study also found that the tasks people undertake online vary based on their method of access.

The findings are based on a four-year study of 2,000 Internet users and non-users, as well as comparisons between new users and experienced users. The project marks 1994 as the year the Internet became widely available to the public as that’s when the major online providers – which until then had maintained their own proprietary electronic services – opened their portals to the outside world for millions of their users.

For the complete report go to www.digitalcenter.org.

Virus makers, get ready for a legal challenge by Avecho, a UK online e-mail company. Avecho says it will offering ?10,000 to anyone who can slip a virus past its GlassWall security system. The contest will begin when Avecho finds an independent arbiter to monitor the contest, the company said. Avecho (www.avecho.com) offers what it says is the most secure online e-mail service available for businesses. “Avecho has operated without passing a single e-mail virus, worm or Trojan since 2002,” the firm claims.