How Do You Hug an E-Friend? (excerpt from A REAL LIFE)

How Do You Hug an Electronic Friend?
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids aged eight to eighteen devote 1,600 minutes per week to watching TV, while the amount of time per week that a child spends in meaningful conversation with his parents is 3 ½ minutes.            When I first read these statistics, I was speechless. It took some time to comprehend that if a child sleeps for eight hours, goes to school for abou...