ARTICLES: From toddlers to teens, a digital world

Alongside Lego building blocks and dolls, tablet computers and laptops are making their way into children's playrooms. Parents are alternately amused and irritated, fascinated and concerned.

"It's totally amazing how they handle these things," says a young mother about her three and five year old children and how deftly they handle computers and smart phones. And the mother of a six-year old marvels that her child must have been born knowing how to "swipe a touchscreen."

More than 1.2 million children in Germany aged three to eight are regularly online, according to a 150-page study entitled "Children in the digital world."

The study conducted by the German Institute for Trust and Security on the Internet (DIVSI) and the Sinus Social Research Institute looks at how children in that age group navigate the digital world.

To that end, they questioned 1,029 kids aged six to eight - in addition to 1,832 parents of the younger set, that is, the three to eight-year-olds.

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