Young netizens worry Chinese parents

BEIJING - PLaying with dolls or building blocks may be the favorite pastime for Chinese kids in the past, but now they are being challenged by the attractive cyberspace.

A recent survey report says more than 70 percent of kids had experience of Internet surfing at or before the age of 10, and 10 percent of the them began accessing the Internet before three years old.

The report, released by the Chinese Young Pioneers Business Development Centre in March, was based on a survey of 11,000 elementary and high school students and 5,500 parents across the nation.

According to the report, what the kids do online are mostly playing games and using social media like twitter-like Weibo, or QQ, a popular online chatting tool in China.

According to a similar survey report released by the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences on May 30, 82 percent of the more than 3,000 children respondents surf the Internet everyday.

These reports aroused heated debate on Weibo.com.

Parents worry that addiction to online games may affect children's academic performance, as well as their physical and mental wellbeing.

These worries are well-founded. According to the centre's report, 72.5 percent of the children surveyed have viewed information online considered as "harmful" by parents, such as sex-explicit pictures and videos of violent content.

For nine-year-old Yi Fan, the biggest fun getting on line is playing games. "I feel happy when playing games...thrilling." said Yi, who has at least 30 minutes surfing online everyday after finishing homework.

In the eyes of grade-five pupil Little Hao (nickname), playing online games on computers is a trend. "All of my classmates play online games on computers, and most of them have played for two years," said Little Hao.

"Playing computer games at an early age has negative effects," said Wang Xiangnan, a researcher from the Beijing-based Sentian Psychological Institute.

The online games, which are believed in the past to be helpful for improving the kids' thinking, actually bring more strain and anxiety to them, said Wang.

"How to keep them away from bad influence of the Internet, that's what I'm thinking about," said a mother surnamed Huang. She said the cyber world contains various sorts of information, good or bad, which the children are sure to find.

According to posts on Weibo.com, some parents try to forbid kids from surfing the Internet through various means, such as setting codes on their computers or even cutting the Internet connection, which Huang doesn't agree.

Children's access to the Internet should not be cut, she said, adding however that sound guide for children is needed.

Psychologist Wang said children's acts online can be guided if we find out their real interest.

Wang suggested parents participate in the kids' online world themselves, such as playing games with them, so as to build trust and then guild them to correctly use the Internet.

Zhang Haibo, who participated in the Guangdong survey, said that lectures on new media, such as the Internet, should be launched in schools and among parents as early as possible.