"As of March 2006, 42% of all American adults had a high-speed internet connection at home. In March 2005, 30% of all adults had high-speed internet at home.

This growth in broadband adoption has been fueled in part by an increase in internet penetration in the past year, from 66% to 73%. Nearly half of these new internet users subscribe to high-speed services at home.

The 40% increase in home broadband adoption from March 2005 to March 2006 is double the 20% rate of increase that occurred from March 2004 to March 2005."

"As electronic devices get smaller, people tote their technology around the house more than ever. And as the number of home wireless networks also grows, laptops - along with Treos, BlackBerries and other messaging devices - are migrating into the bedroom and onto the bed. The marital bed has survived his-and-her book lights and the sushi-laden bed tray. Can it also survive computers that tether their owners to the office or make the bed the workplace itself?

Piper Kerman, Mr. Smith's wife, tries to be understanding about her husband's need to work constantly, but her tolerance has limits, especially when she thinks about the significance of their bed, their first joint purchase when they started out as a couple 10 years ago.

'Not to get too squishy about it, but you kind of want the bed to be a sacred space,' she said. 'The bed is a restorative place in my mind. It's not a place to work.'"

Parents have always been troubled with how Hollywood features sexual content in films, television programming, and music videos to reach young people. Yet they may need to add Madison Avenue to their radar screens, judging from a study that documents how the advertising industry also exploits the libido in order to pander to young audiences.

Tom Reichert of the University of Alabama evaluated 2,863 full-page ads in six consumer magazines from both 1992 and 1998. His findings confirm what many already suspect: that advertising geared to young adults in their twenties, relative to ads geared to older adults, is far more likely to use sexual imagery, including suggestive or revealing clothing (including swimsuits and underwear) and inferred nudity.

Display advertising targeted to young adults were 1.65 times more likely to feature models dressed sexually and 2.28 times more likely to feature models engaged in some form of sexual behavior.

Also not surprising, female models were 3.7 times more likely to be portrayed sexually than male models in ads directed to young adults. However, ads with these sexually dressed female models were 1.57 times more likely to appear in Mademoiselle and Redbook than in Gentleman's Quarterly and Forbes.

Reichert suggests that greater "media literacy" among the young and consumer action against Madison Avenue and its clients could change the situation, as did efforts to include greater racial diversity in advertising a generation ago. But as long as young people tell marketers, as they did in American Demographics in 2001, that they are more likely to buy clothes if ads include sexual imagery, Reichert might be waiting a long time.