Children in the big cities in China are growing up with the Internet as part of their daily lives.

Compared with other countries in the "World Internet Project" initiated by the University of California in Los Angeles in 1999, China exerts much more energy on exploring how going online affects adolescent's use of their time, schoolwork, personalities and friendships, said Bu Wei, a sociologist specializing in media impact on adolescents.

In the latest 70-page survey conducted under Bu's guidance, researchers found that teenagers are "amazingly mature in their judgement of choices related to the Internet."

"Parents are always worried about the bad effects the Internet may have on their children," Bu said. "However, children are not passive facing the Internet.

They will choose what to do online according to their personal needs, value and personalities."

The survey showed that the Internet is more like an equal partner rather than a "teacher." For instance, 31.7 per cent of teenage users said the Internet was a "friend," 31.1 per cent said "assistant," 31.4 per cent said "game fellow," but only 5.8 per cent said it was a "teacher."

By the end of July this year, of the 68 million Internet users in China, users below the age of 18 made up 17.1 per cent, according to sources from the China Internet Network Information Centre.

Bu and her co-researcher Liu Xiaohong conducted their survey in two municipalities - Beijing and Shanghai, and five provincial capital cities - Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Changsha in Hunan Province, Xining in Qinghai Province and Huhhot in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Participating the survey were 3,400 students in middle and primary schools, and there were 3,375 valid samples, according to Bu.

The 63.3 per cent juvenile Internet user rate is much higher than that of adults. In Guangzhou, the former is 73.3 per cent, while the latter is only 34.30 per cent.

Among the cities surveyed, Changsha has a 78.4 per cent Internet-user rate among teenagers, the highest of all cities surveyed.

Only in Xining was there a percentage below 50 - 37.1 per cent.

Over half of the teenage Internet users usually go online at home, and they prefer Internet bars, homes of relatives and friends, school and their parents' office in that descending order.

In Guangzhou, 91.5 per cent of juvenile users go online at home, the highest rate among the seven cities.

"That's because Guangzhou has the highest number of household computers and home Internet access," said Bu.

Over two-thirds of the juvenile users agreed or strongly agreed to the following statements: "I love the Internet;" "The Internet makes my life more interesting;" "It's easy to learn how to go online;" "I feel very comfortable when going online."

The Internet is not perceived by most teenage users as having an effect on school grades. The time spent on homework and sports by teenage Internet users is more than that spent by non-users, but users spend less time sleeping.

Some 65 per cent of adolescent users said they went online for the sake of communication, followed by motives such as school work, company, to shake off loneliness and for entertainment.

Even though respondents consistently said that online access is a powerful tool for information gathering, it ranks only fifth among the list of sources of information for teens. School, family, friend, books ranked first to fourth respectively.

"Teens watch less television, read fewer newspapers, books and magazines and listen to less radio after starting to use the Internet, but they listen more to CD players, MP3 players and tape recorders," said Bu.

When asked to choose between TV and the Internet, 68 per cent chose the Internet and 32 per cent said they preferred TV.

When asked "If you could only choose two out of six media - the Internet, television, newspapers, a walkman and a cell phone," 65.2 per cent of the respondents said the Internet, and 41.8 per cent said television, followed by books, a walkman, a cell phone and newspapers.

Bu said she and her colleague found that the Internet enables teenage children to become more open and willing to communicate with friends, family and society.

"The longer they are involved with the Internet, the stronger desire they have to join in social affairs, spend more time with friends and discuss various problems with their parents," she said.

(China Daily 09/23/2003 page9)