Internet Safety

When I was in middle school, my parents decided it was important to put a limit on the amount of time I spent on the computer, as I often spent three or four hours a day.  At the time I thought they didn't understand—it wasn't three hours of one activity; I played games, did homework, talked with friends, and followed my favorite websites online.  These were all distinct activities that all happened to involve a computer.  Such was my argument, anyway.  But as the world becomes more and more interconnected, I see this argument cropping up in other places.  These days, it seems you can do everything from buying groceries to babysitting the children over the internet.  It's important, though, to recognize that we were not intended to live our lives around a computer; computers exist to serve us, not for us to serve them.