Italy's quixotic crusade against teen Internet dependency

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

In the 2001 electoral campaign, Silvio Berlusconi festooned Italy's walls with gigantic posters announcing the beginning of the Internet age in the country's schools. Forget Latin and ancient Greek; the Internet would breed a new class of modern-day entrepreneurs. Italians liked that message, and Berlusconi won the race (though perhaps his tax cuts were the real reason for his victory). 

But in Italy, the second-favorite national sport—after soccer, of course—is reforming public education. Each time a new government steps in, it rushes to undo what the previous government has put in place.

And so the Internet itself, with its associations with Berlusconi, has become Italy's latest political football. The new guidelines published by the ministry of education speak of "preventing cases of [teen] dependency on drugs, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, [sports] doping, and the Internet" (my translation). It's an implicit rebuke of the previous administration, whose championing of the World Wide Web presumably created not venture capitalists, but video-game addicts.

What seems to have escaped both the left and the right, though, is that there are still very few computers in Italian schools. In 2001, there was one computer for every 30 kids, and although Italy is catching up, it still has a long way to go. Isn't it a little premature to worry about the dangers of Internet dependency among the little wannabe entrepreneurs?