I'm not a parent but I could swear I stumbled on some articles that deal with this subject but I just did not have them bookmarked. (Nothing specific but it dealt with the issue.)
Short answer is yes. There's really no choice but up for technology at this point and the better the child understands the technical background of technology, the more they are less affected by the magnetism of social networks. (Photos are not that impressive to a teen if they are just more technical photo albums for example. Neither are status messages if a human understands that the status is better data mined than be the one being data mined.)
There's a plethora of Videogame can enhance the brain such as this article that can be startpage.com'd (this link is more for FPS):
http://www.npr.org/2...-multitasking-skillsTime is less important than context.
A competitive game can improve dedication provided a kid is pushing the limits of being a better fighting gamer but once the genre gets liquidated into simply "the next best game with new characters to select/create" then it's a cash drain and it all depends on how pro the person is at wanting to seek this path in their life.
The deceptive part is in being able to differentiate general false brain games that claim to improve memory from videogames and online materials that connect, curate and simulate the passion of your child.
It's not as clear cut as a child playing SimCity wants to be a mayor or a teen playing Grand Theft Auto wants to steal or a person investing heavily on Minecraft wanting to be a lego sculptor. It sounds obvious but with hysteria not only on the dangers of videogames but on the positive power of videogames, you can't really tell.
For example, lots of racers use racing videogames to sim the tracks because it saves time. Lots of army men use shooting sims because of the tactics.
You can't mistake these for gun sims. They are there to desensitive the environment and relieve anxiety and promote tactical routes for the participants but in no way do they form a person's desire to just steal a gun or unload with violence.
In the same concept, there are kid's games that are more harmful despite their kiddie exterior and there are adult videogames that can promote better learning interest for your kid while they are still a kid than when they play these same videogames as an adult (assuming correct mentor guidance to extend the kid's passion).
The real time web is much more complicated but the good news is that kids, as they grow, adapt faster than adults provided they have the right tech circle to influence them.
A kid who has Facebook friends is not the same as a kid who can see Facebook as a platform to bravely attempt bad videos on youtube that they will then transmit on Facebook.
However, a parent pretending to be much more knowledgeable than a child in browsing or other tech related subjects, is more likely to simulate turning a child's love of reading into a homework. It can only translate so much before the child hates to read in general unless they are a genius, creative or really have capable parents.
Those are all my impressions from the articles I read. Basically it all comes down to this, children are still human and the children that is best parented into maximizing technology in the most positive manner is the children that's treated equally like an adult by the parent. This means if the parent does not know a technical subject and a parent is not interested in knowing it, it transfers to the child unless chaos plays a role and a child is influenced by a friend or a site. Vice versa, children's first human interaction tend to be their parents so every chance a parent can transfer that "passion" for learning that technical concept to their children is one human being better adapted to that technical concept. This
does not mean handing the child the product though but handing the child the learning tools to better utilize a technological concept beyond what it advertises itself as or beyond what the parent has already done with the product. It does not mean things like parental control don't help focus a child's attention but they simply don't learn and over time create a negative learning interruption for that child that weakens their resolve for learning and exposes them more to using the web as a form of escapism once the lock is off.
