British children depressed without internet

With the internet being an essential part of growing kids' environment today, young children in the UK have a powerful emotional connection to the web says a new survey; almost half of British children were "sad" if they could not use the internet.

International consumer research specialist organisation Intersperience's survey revealed that 49 per cent of people under the age of 12 said they would be ''sad'' without it, while one in five said that they would be ''lonely''.

Of the 1,000 young people between the ages of 8 and 18 surveyed in the 'Digital Futures' project, which tried to gauge the impact of online and digital technology in their lives, 60 per cent said that they would be ''sad'' if they could not connect to the internet, while 48 per cent said they would be lonely.

The survey uncovered radical differences between the ways children and adults relate to the internet, with pre-18s primarily valuing it for social and entertainment purposes and older teens being particularly keen on mobile internet.

Teenagers are the heaviest users of mobile devices, particularly smartphones, and their number one online activity is chatting with friends. More than 70 per cent of teenagers said they chat on Facebook.

But surprisingly more than half of the teenagers surveyed said that they are still keen to talk to friends face-to-face, compared to 35 per cent who like to talk to friends online.