Increasing number of youngsters and school students are slowly getting addicted to social networking sites like facebook and their parents fear it is affecting their academic performance. Recently a research by YouGov revealed that around one-fourth of children aged six to eleven spend significant amount of their time on surfing internet and networking on websites like Facebook and Twitter. However, hardly one-tenth of these kids spend time on internet for help in home work and other useful purposes.

Majority of parents surveyed felt that if their kids were to be restricted in their usage of internet, they’d perform better academically. Continuous use of social networking sites and other non-educational sites is badly affecting the grades of students, feared nearly half of the parents surveyed.

Thirty-six percent parents of children aged six to ten said they were concerned about the web’s impact on academic performance. Among parents with children aged 12 to 17, 62% said they were worried.

Fears were raised even though most social networking sites have a “no minors” policy. Children aged 12 to 17 who use the internet every day for homework and social networking claimed they spend equal time on each – an hour or two a day. However, three-fourth parents surveyed said they should ¬put some restrictions on home PC usage by children.

In an earlier survey of 500 teachers, half said pupils’ fixation on social networking sites was affecting their capacity to focus in class.

The craze of social networking site is such that one in five school going kids has a Facebook account; even though rules say they must be 13. There have been reports that say almost half of British children aged 9 to 12 are using social networking sites, despite minimum age limit.