[photopress:webcafeuser.jpg,full,alignright]A survey shows that in Dongguan more than 90% primary and middle school students ‘like’ or ‘very much like’ to surf the Internet, with 3% being addicted to it.
The city’s Guancheng District recently conducted a survey covering 11 schools to know the extent of students’ dependence on the Net. The exercise is to help the government better regulate cybercafes.
About 18% of the 3,400 students polled surfed the Net frequently in cybercafes and 17% did so once in a while. Net cafes are the first option for 1% of the students.
For 30% of the pupils, online chatting and playing games, watching films and listening to music on the Net are the favorite pastimes. Though about 85% of the parents believed their children wouldn’t visit adult sexy websites, 75% favored setting a time limit and restricting the sites for them.
Nearly 44% parents were worried that Net surfing would harm their children’s studies and 42% feared they would get addicted to online games.
(Note that these figures are in line with other surveys done around the world. The major difference is not in the amount of surfing but in the place. The use of cybercafes for surfing instead of surfing from home is not common in all countries.)
The government in China has been urged to open some Internet bars to meet the students’ needs because all cybercafes, including those authorized by the local government, are under strict orders not to allow teenagers and younger children to surf the Net.
The survey suggested that some students, especially those whose parents were migrant laborers, and thus couldn’t afford online services at home, needed the Internet bars. They urged the government to sponsor some cybercafes that would be open for fixed hours and allow access only to ‘clean’ sites to help such children.
Source: China Daily
