What are Chinese children doing online?  Is the internet bringing children into an adult world too soon?  Center research scholar Wang Qing explains.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

By Wang Qing

China has been witnessing an ever-growing population of juvenile users on the internet. The latest statistics from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) shows that children and teenagers account for 22.5% of the total 751 million netizen population.

These findings reflect the trend of a growing number of younger children using the internet. The internet population under 10 years old rose to 23.4 million in 2017, making up 13.8% of the overall under-17 netizens — an increase of 9.1% since 2008. Fifty-six percent of the juvenile internet population is exposed to the technology by age 5.

The status quo of Chinese children’s internet use may be an East world echo of Neil Postman’s lament on The Disappearance of Childhood in the digital age. Children have been, according to Postman, “a group of people who do not know certain things that adults know.” But new media has been eroding the information access divide between children and adults, producing increasingly informed children.

What is the attitude of Chinese parents toward their children’s internet use? Do they worry about their children’s vanishing childhood in the internet era? And how do they monitor and regulate their children’s internet use?

Being digital kids

Technology author Nicholas Negroponte, with his concept “being digital,” argues that humanity is inevitably headed towards a future where everything that can be digitized will be (be it newspapers, entertainment, sex, etc.). This refers not only to adults but to children as well; kids rely on the internet as much as adults. Some have suggested that they be referred to as “the generation of digital natives” or even “internet slaves.” In this regard, the media in China has dubbed them “precocious children and rejuvenescent adults.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The move toward “being digital” has accelerated worldwide. In China, as elsewhere, this objective has been fed by both government policy and a competitive social and economic environment. Those who lack adequate digital knowledge and skill can fall behind, and this presents serious risks for Chinese children and their futures. Realizing this, parents of all strata in China want their children to immerse themselves in the digital world so that they can be competitive and successful.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Internet access is available almost everywhere for children in China : homes, schools, stores, etc., through PCs, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and widely installed WiFi. Moreover, due to the government’s heavy promotion of the internet nationwide, there is no significant difference in internet use between urban and rural juveniles.

The time juveniles spend on the internet has soared dramatically. Chinese middle school students spend an average of 22 hours per week online, while elementary school students spend nearly 15 hours per week — almost double the use in 2008.

What are Chinese children doing on the internet?

There is no dividing line between childhood and adulthood in cyber space, since children can do whatever adults do online. Except for news browsing and online shopping, children also share many of the same online interests as adults.

Social interaction ranks highest among children’s internet usage interests. Almost 74% of elementary school student internet users and 94% of middle school users have engaged in online social interaction through instant messaging apps, such as Wechat and QQ, the two most prevalent social media applications in China today.

Online entertainment ranks second. Nearly 65% of elementary school users play games, watch videos, and listen to music online. As for the middle school student users, the proportion is higher than 70%. For many children, going online for amusement is their preferable way to relax and refresh themselves after finishing their homework, ranking ahead of going outdoors for physical activities. Many parents grant on-line surfing time as an extra reward for their kids when they perform well in school.

Many children also use the internet to finish their homework and develop technological skills. In accord with the Chinese government’s “National Strategy of Internet plus Education” policy, most primary schools provide curriculum such as information science to inspire kids to use the internet. Moreover, teachers are typically required to create online chat rooms via social media applications for assigning homework, arranging class activities, and communicating with students’ parents.

Do Chinese parents worry about their children’s internet use?

The importance of preserving childhood boundaries online is self-evident. Although Postman claimed that he couldn’t come up with the definitive solution to the disappearance of childhood, he called for commitment from schools and parents to reduce children’s exposure to the internet. But, do most Chinese parents actually take this advice? Not really.

Many Chinese parents express negative attitude towards their children’s internet use for entertainment because of their concerns about risks to children from pornography, cyber bullying, and the like. But it is a different matter when it comes to the internet use for learning. Here parents are much more likely to push their kids toward internet use by providing them with more resources and support.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The status quo of Chinese children’s internet use may be an East world echo of Neil Postman’s lament on The Disappearance of Childhood in the digital age. Children have been, according to Postman, “a group of people who do not know certain things that adults know.” But new media has been eroding the information access divide between children and adults, producing increasingly informed children.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

In October 2017, a group of parents whose children were in fifth grade at Tsinghua University Elementary School trained their children after school to use the internet for doing some adult-like academic research and data analysis. Their work attracted nationwide attention and aroused a heated discussion on social media. Under the supervision of their parents, these elementary school students used sophisticated internet techniques, such as data collection, application of word frequency statistics, and data visualization to conduct an empirical analysis of the 3,458 poems written by 11th century Chinese poet Su Shi.

Most of the Chinese public marveled at the advanced internet skills of the intellectual elite’s children. Opinions among those from lower economic classes varied from admiration to envy. There was also anxiety about the internet gap between their own children and those whose families were of higher economic and social status.

On the other hand, some Chinese were skeptical of children’s use of the internet in this way.

Shen Yan, a professor at Peking University, has criticized the technology fetishism among many schools and parents in China that ambitiously push children to master new media knowledge and techniques too far and too fast. Shen argues that this push might compromise their children’s innocence and impair their creativity. He has reflected on how the internet has negatively impacted the modern Chinese education system — a view previously expressed by Postman about television viewing in the West.

What is the real worry of Chinese parents in the internet era?

The move toward “being digital” has accelerated worldwide. In China, as elsewhere, this objective has been fed by both government policy and a competitive social and economic environment. Those who lack adequate digital knowledge and skill can fall behind, and this presents serious risks for Chinese children and their futures. Realizing this, parents of all strata in China want their children to immerse themselves in the digital world so that they can be competitive and successful.

Accordingly, rather than worry about their children’s loss of innocence due to excessive internet use, Chinese parents are more likely to worry about their children’s lack of engagement with the technology. The disappearance of childhood is, at most, a secondary concern. As People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in China, put it, “Constraining children from internet use is no more reasonable than giving up eating for fear of choking.”
__________

Wang Qing is a lecturer in the Journalism and Communication School at Hainan Normal University.

See all columns from the Center.

August 30, 2018