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for the first time ever this year, the American Library Association's annual conference had a gaming pavilion, showcasing efforts to reach a demographic — tweens, teens and 20-somethings — that's tough to pull into the library.

Then there's just the overall focus on puzzle-solving, Danforth noted. Unlike books, games often have multiple story lines, depending on decisions that gamers make along the way. In the overall scheme of things, deploying a warrior for one job and a wizard for another isn't that much different from a boss sending an engineer out for one task and a public relations professional for another.

Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day

. About 40 percent of the nation’s minors have access to Webcams, Carrill explained, devices for uploading live video to the Internet. About 65 percent of all children have access to cell phone cameras.Carrill’s team recently started a new operation to search image-trading Web sites for known child pornography in Missouri. The results were frightening, he said. More than 6,000 images were found in the state; about 700 of those pictures were downloaded in the Kansas City area.Between sexual predators who fish for images and immature decisions by kids with cameras, more children are either having their images posted online or being exposed to pornography, according to a 2006 report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In the end, the best tool to defeat child pornography is parent education, according to both Shehan and Carrill. More than anything, kids need to know they can trust their parents.“It’s through that open line of communication between the parent and child that they can work through or prevent bad situations,” Carrill said.

All parents should follow a few basic rules when it comes to cyber safety, according to experts:- Keep computers in common areas of the home.- Monitor Internet use by children.- Enable privacy protection software.- Turn Webcams off or protect them with a password.- Track what images are being uploaded by children in the household.- Talk to children about what is appropriate.

ome children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Conn., have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.

Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.