Although many people may respond badly to recent figures about the increase in time spent by children on the internet, parents and critics must take a major factor into account.

Tim Linehan, the director of campaigns and media at the Children's Society, said that given the ramping up of fears regarding traffic and other malefactors in society, children were being let out of the house a lot less so many took to the computer as a way of escaping.

He said: "80 per cent of young people say that their biggest complaint is there is nowhere to go. If they've got nowhere to go and have restricted movements then it's inevitable that they'll stay inside."

The comments follow Cyber Sentinel's survey last week which detailed that the average teenager spends 31 hours online every week.

Mr Linehan emphasised that the entertainment value of the internet was huge for children and was not at all surprising.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.