Nearly half of China teenagers often encounter bad information on the Internet. How to take care of it？

　　In March 2017, the National Office of "Combating Pornography and Illegal Publications" and Tencent held the activity of "Children’s Cyber Security Course Entering the Campus" at Xiaobei Road Primary School in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, which was welcomed by teachers and students.

　　People’s vision

　　With the rapid development and comprehensive popularization of mobile Internet and smart devices, it is more convenient for teenagers to contact the Internet, and the age of contact with the Internet is showing a trend of younger age. Moderate use of the Internet can enrich life and relieve stress, but the social experience of teenagers is insufficient, and their network literacy and online habits are in the forming stage. How to help teenagers use the Internet healthily and effectively and guide them to actively adapt to the Internet age is an important and urgent topic.

　　The generation of teenagers after the Millennium are truly "Internet aborigines", and they have a natural and inseparable connection with the Internet. Internet has become the most important space for entertainment, education, self-expression and communication and interaction of this generation. At the same time, however, the rapidly developing and mixed cyberspace makes this generation of teenagers more vulnerable to physical and mental shocks and even injuries. The protection of teenagers online has become the most concerned social issue for governments, international organizations and every family.

　　At present, one third of the global Internet users are minors. In Britain, Canada, Czech Republic and Israel, 12-mdash; The proportion of 14-year-old children using the Internet exceeds 95%, and the proportion of children using the Internet in EU countries is mostly higher than 65%. In China, the number of netizens under the age of 19 reached 171 million, and the Internet penetration rate of minors remained above 90%. At the same time, the young age trend of minors’ first "touching the net" is obvious. Relevant statistics show that Britain has 5-mdash; More than half of the 6-year-old children have access to the Internet. The average age for Korean children to get their first smart phone is 8 years old. There are about 23 million netizens under the age of 10 in China, and more than 56% of them have been exposed to the Internet before the age of 5. These "Internet aborigines" born after the Millennium almost "surf the Internet as soon as they are literate", and the Internet has profoundly influenced the way they interact with the world.

　　More and more "millennials" have become "low-headed families"

　　With the high popularity of home broadband and hardware equipment, minors generally choose to surf the Internet at home. According to UNICEF data, in Argentina, Serbia and South Africa, more than 90% of minors surf the Internet at home; The survey of children’s online use in Britain also found that 75% of them are 9-mdash; 19-year-olds use the Internet at home; America 2— Of the 17-year-old population, 78% can surf the Internet at home, and 13% of them surf the Internet in their own rooms. According to the annual survey data of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) since 2007, the proportion of minors using computers to surf the Internet in Internet cafes, schools and public places has generally decreased year by year.

　　The report "Investigation on Internet Use and Protection of Young Netizens in China" shows that 74.6% of young netizens in China use smart phones to surf the Internet, and 60.4% of young netizens have their own smart phones. Desktop computers rank second, and their adoption rate is about 10 percentage points lower than that of smart phones. Smart TV has become one of the main channels for teenagers to surf the Internet. Many parents also choose smart TV to accompany preschool children, but the digital gap between different regions is more obvious.

　　Information and communication technology has changed the way minors contact with the world, and cyberspace has attracted them greatly, so the online time has been prolonged. A study in Denmark found that as children grow up, their use of the Internet is increasing, and similar trends have appeared in other countries. In China, in recent years, the online time of minors has generally increased. The online time of primary school students is 14.9 hours per week, and that of middle school students is 22 hours per week. The online time is also increasing with age.

　　According to the report of the International Telecommunication Union, the main reasons for teenagers to surf the Internet include: making friends in the new environment, communicating in real time on common interests, creating and sharing original personal content, sharing music, playing games, establishing their own space, or trying new identities. Therefore, the Internet is always with them — — In their pockets or ears, or tightly held in their hands, embedded in their study and living space.

　　A survey of five Nordic countries shows that 9-mdash; Among 16-year-old boys, 69% use the Internet to play games, 49% download music, while girls use it to send emails (58%) and do their homework online (43%). According to the latest data of CNNIC, the Internet applications with the highest penetration rate of underage netizens in China are: instant messaging tools, search engines, online music, online videos and online games. Among them, the popularity of search engines, online music and online games among minors exceeds that of netizens as a whole, and the utilization rate of online games among middle school students is even as high as 70%.

　　The phenomenon of minors’ internet addiction is becoming increasingly serious.

　　Compared with the rapid development of cyberspace, the education and protection system for teenagers to use the internet has shown its lag and imperfection. At present, young netizens all over the world are facing the risks of contact with bad information, bad social interaction, property loss, illegal crime, internet addiction and lack of cognition.

　　According to statistics, 46% of young netizens in China will come into contact with bad information on the Internet almost every time or often, among which pornographic information is the most frequent type, followed by online fraud, online gambling, online abuse and intimidation. It is worth noting that teenagers often come into contact with bad information in a passive way, for example, when clicking on a web page, pictures and videos containing pornographic and violent information pop up, and when browsing information, they see indecent pictures inserted in them. There are not only illegal websites among the websites that spread bad information, but also many regular legal websites often attract attention with bad information in the form of "scratching the ball". At the same time, the uploaders, websites or their host service providers of such content are often not in their own countries, which further increases the difficulty of governance in various countries and regions. On the other hand, the bad information on the internet has a serious negative impact on the concept and psychology of minors, and even leads to crime.

　　According to internet society of china’s Investigation Report on the Protection of Internet Users’ Rights and Interests in China, Internet users suffered economic losses of 133 yuan per capita due to spam, fraudulent information and personal information disclosure, with a total loss of about 91.5 billion yuan. In addition, teenagers are increasingly dependent on the Internet.

　　In addition, the phenomenon of internet addiction is also on the rise around the world. Many studies have shown that there is a high correlation between interactive internet use behavior and internet addiction, such as chatting through instant messaging tools or playing online games, which makes users more addicted to it. Therefore, in the era of mobile internet characterized by interaction and participation, with the rapid penetration of the network into younger groups, the problem of internet addiction among minors is becoming increasingly serious.

　　The academic circles believe that teenagers should spend no more than 1.5 hours a day and no more than 10 hours a week on the Internet, while teenagers generally spend too much time online: 30% of minors in South Korea spend more than 2 hours a day on the Internet, while primary school students in China spend 1.5 times as much time online as this standard, and middle school students even spend twice as much time online. The data also shows that China’s 6-mdash; 47.9% of 11-year-old young netizens usually spend more time online than expected, 12-mdash; Among the 18-year-old young netizens, 60.8% want to surf the Internet when they have free time, which generally shows strong network dependence. Immersion in the online world often brings instant pleasure experience to minors, but their anxiety and fear also increase with the increase of online time, so they are often in a state of frustration and impatience. At the same time, excessive internet access may also strengthen personal loneliness and cause social retreat.

　　Family factors are the key factors that affect minors’ internet addiction. However, many parents and guardians regard mobile phones and computers as "electronic nannies" and neglect the care and education of their children. Teenagers who don’t feel the warmth of their families are more likely to seek spiritual sustenance in the online world, further causing a vicious circle.

　　Strengthen the cultivation of skills and literacy in using digital tools.

　　How to protect minors’ online safety? At present, there is no quick answer, which requires all sectors of society to take countermeasures and persevere.

　　First of all, governments should promote the construction and improvement of relevant legal systems in terms of content, channels, platforms and operations as soon as possible according to the characteristics and development laws of information and communication technologies. Relevant laws and regulations should clearly define the responsible subject for protecting minors’ online safety, clearly define the scope of application and punishment measures, and provide reliable protection for minors’ online activities.

　　Among them, the Internet regulatory authorities should constantly upgrade and update technical supervision means, and guide relevant websites to be equipped with age verification systems or identity verification mechanisms, and at the same time establish a rapid reporting and handling mechanism to promptly punish illegal and illegal behaviors that endanger minors’ online safety. Internet companies and related industries should conduct self-examination and self-examination, eliminate pornography, violence, vulgarity, gambling, fraud and other bad information content, and purify the Internet environment; All kinds of websites should set a higher default privacy level for the collection, processing and storage of minors’ personal data to protect minors’ information from illegal collection and use.

　　Enterprises can adopt appropriate technical measures to encrypt specific information content according to age, or add access age authentication mechanism according to relevant laws and regulations; At the same time, provide concise reporting tools, delete bad information in time, and transfer information suspected of online fraud, abduction and sexual crimes to public security and relevant law enforcement departments. Enterprises should also support the research and development of parental monitoring tools to help parents intervene in their children’s online time, or limit the consumption of certain content and services by minors, or control the objects they talk to online.

　　In the new scientific and technological environment, mastering the skills of using digital tools and having information and media literacy will become the basic survival skills of citizens. Therefore, teaching students how to use the Internet reasonably, legally and moderately is a task that the education sector must shoulder at present. Teachers should update their knowledge system as soon as possible, teach basic knowledge of network security and self-protection in relevant classes, and encourage students to actively seek help from teachers and schools when encountering difficulties, so as to become a trusted social support force for minors. Teachers should also regularly carry out psychological counseling against cyber bullying to prevent students from participating in cyber bullying or becoming targets of bullying; Once the cyberbullying incident is discovered, the school should intervene and stop it in time, and communicate with parents. For serious cyberbullying incidents, it should report to the police in time. Primary and secondary schools should gradually offer network security courses and media literacy courses suitable for students of different ages, systematically teach the knowledge and skills of receiving, analyzing, evaluating and creating information, and gradually improve the media security literacy, media interaction literacy, media learning literacy and media cultural literacy of minors.

　　Faced with the new thing of the Internet, parents can no longer rely on their own experience to guide their children as in traditional families. Instead, they should first take the initiative to learn relevant network security knowledge, be strict with themselves, reasonably arrange online time, and set an example by not browsing or spreading bad information.

　　Parents should also actively guide and educate their children to surf the Internet from several aspects: in terms of time, strictly control the total length of time for children to surf the Internet, and set the account password of internet equipment or install software to limit the time for surfing the Internet; In terms of content, help children find healthy and suitable websites, such as regularly checking the websites that children usually browse, evaluating the contents of websites, or installing parental monitoring tools on the basis of full communication with children; In the aspect of social networking, children are encouraged to explore the new world by using the Internet, but they are firmly opposed to meeting netizens offline, and are informed of the serious danger of this behavior, so as to grasp the real situation of their friends in social accounts at present, and often communicate their online experience with children.

　　(The authors are the Institute of Journalism and the Internet Research Center of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)

　　Cartography: Shen Yiling