Cyber vaticinations: a systematic review of schoolchildren's activities in the cyberspace in thirty years' time

Abstract

There are scholarly pieces of evidence attesting to the use of the Internet by children in a manner comparable to adult users. Many children now use mobile phones, laptop computers, and tablet PCs that are connected to the Internet to access the cyberspace and engage in any activity of interest. The Spatio-temporal communications by schoolchildren in cyberspace have reduced television viewing which in the analog era was subjected to parental control. Unfortunately, the technical nature of the Internet makes it difficult for parents to control the contents available to schoolchildren in the cyberspace. This article uses the space transition theory to examine and analyse schoolchildren’s current cyberspace activities relating to cyber dating, cybersex, cyberbullying, and online gambling to infer the dimensions that these activities would take in the next thirty years. Current scholarly articles were explicated on popular engagements of schoolchildren in the cyberspace and analysed to predict the dimensions of these activities in thirty years. This paper is of scholarly value on the vogues that would be prevalent in the cyberspace in the next generation. The emerging trends in the scholarly articles analysed were used to recommend cyber-parenting related measures on training schoolchildren in the next thirty years.