Internet use for minors： from entertainment to entertaining.

　　On February 27th, 2023, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Overall Layout Plan of Digital China Construction (hereinafter referred to as "the Plan"). The Plan points out that speeding up the construction of digital China is of great significance and far-reaching influence on building a socialist modern country and promoting the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in an all-round way. The Plan also points out that it is necessary to strengthen the supply of high-quality online cultural products, guide various platforms and netizens to create and produce positive, healthy and upward-oriented online cultural products, and further promote the digital development of culture and implement the national cultural digital strategy. Teenagers are the vanguard force to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the new force to achieve the goal of the second century and build a socialist modern power, and they can’t be absent from the overall layout of the construction of digital China. It is one of the core essentials of the construction of digital China to let minors enjoy the universal and convenient digital culture and get high-quality development in the digital society.

　　According to the "Research Report on Internet Use of Minors in China in 2021" (hereinafter referred to as "Report") issued by the Central Rights and Interests Department of the Communist Youth League and China Internet Information Center, the top five online use behaviors of minors are online learning (88.9%), listening to music (63.0%), playing games (62.3%) and chatting (53.4%). It can be seen that minors mainly use the Internet for learning and entertainment, especially through the Internet. According to the report, nearly 40% of minors learn extracurricular knowledge through the internet, and more than 70% think that the internet is helpful for learning. This shows that the internet use of minors is gradually changing from "toys" to "tools" and from entertainment to knowledge.

　　Karl Mannheim, a German sociologist, believes that knowledge is characterized by openness and mobility in the process of modern society. The knowledge of short video platform broke the knowledge barrier, changed the linear and self-contained characteristics in the past, and showed the characteristics of networking and knowledge sharing. Through the reorganization and transformation of knowledge, it creates a learning space and platform with diverse contents and rich forms for people, which makes the boundary of knowledge learning in the digital age more extended and integrated, and serves the minors and provides them with an important channel to broaden their horizons and increase their knowledge. The short video is visual, scene-oriented and practical, which is more in line with the cognitive law of minors. Therefore, the Report also shows that nearly half of minors study through short video platforms. Among them, 34.0% are primary school students, 61.8% are junior high school students, 65.1% are senior high school students and 64.7% are secondary vocational school students. It can be seen that the proportion of minors over 12 years old who are exposed to short videos is higher. Minors watch short videos of learning knowledge such as exam counseling and classroom knowledge, accounting for nearly 40%, and watch short videos of interest knowledge such as piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, historical geography, sports and dance, and watch short videos of leisure knowledge such as tourism and food, accounting for nearly half. Moreover, short video platforms such as Tik Tok have also become the main channels for minors to expand their cognition.

　　Facing the brand-new learning style of minors in the digital age, how to use short videos scientifically and reasonably has become a new topic for family rearing and school education in the digital age. Some parents worry that their children are addicted to short videos, but psychological research believes that addictive behavior needs six elements: goal, feedback, progress, challenge, suspense and socialization. That is to say, users are more likely to be addicted if there are six elements in the process of using a product: having a goal, getting feedback in time, getting rewards frequently, constantly encountering new challenges, uncertain results and having social attributes. Moreover, whether it is addictive or not is closely related to the user’s living conditions, psychological conditions, interpersonal relationships and family upbringing. Although short videos have increased people’s sensory experience more comprehensively than words or pictures, they also have social and entertainment attributes, but they do not have these six elements at the same time. The shortcomings of the short video platform, which mainly transmits information, in constructing a new field of knowledge learning are mainly the homogenization of content and the diversification of value. Parents, teachers and other adults should help minors to make good use of the knowledge resources of short video platforms, so that children can enjoy high-quality digital culture through entertaining. Short video is rich in content, diverse in forms, strong in story, short and pithy, and it is more convenient to "brush the screen" in free leisure time, so it has also become people’s leisure products. In order to better transform its entertainment into education and fully integrate entertainment and education, adults need to have high digital literacy.Give more practical help and guidance to minors.

　　Parents and teachers should empower minors and create a digital environment suitable for their development. At the World Digital Education Conference held in February 2023, the Ministry of Education issued "Teachers’ Digital Literacy", requiring teachers to make good use of digital education resources to guide students’ learning. Similarly, parents also urgently need to improve their digital literacy, enhance their digital thinking, digital cognition and digital skills, and make good use of the digital cultural resources of the Internet platform with their children to develop a green and intelligent lifestyle. Parents and teachers should pay special attention to the following relationships in order to make children benefit from opening books to opening screens, and from simple entertainment to entertaining:

　　Balance online life and offline life. The development of the Internet has increased the inclusiveness of knowledge and brought new learning experiences and knowledge acquisition channels to children. Parents and teachers should pay special attention to guiding children to balance online life and offline life. We should not only pay attention to enriching children’s online life, so that children can live a quality digital life, but also pay attention to children’s offline leisure, social, family life and campus life, so that children can have a healthy and positive offline life, which is more conducive to children’s online life and offline practice.

　　Balance entertainment and education. Knowledge in the visual and interesting packaging of short videos makes children feel more interesting and easier to learn. However, in the eyes of many parents and teachers, they always feel "unlike" learning, because in the eyes of adults, they should "learn from the sea and work hard." As the children of the Internet aborigines, it seems that fun is the last word. Parents and teachers should pay attention to balance the relationship between the two, not only to meet the needs of the network generation for learning change, so that children can gain a sense of participation and belonging in their studies, but also to increase education in entertainment, so that children will not get lost in the network in joy, thus dispelling the "heavy feeling" of learning.

　　Balance short and systematic. Shortness is both an advantage and a disadvantage of short video. Short knowledge is more convenient for students to watch and more suitable for children’s short attention time. However, learning knowledge also needs to be systematized, so as to avoid "the blind touch the elephant". Parents and teachers should make good use of their advantages, and at the same time, they should consciously guide their children to build the knowledge system they need, and conduct multi-dimensional and multi-level discussions around a certain topic and a certain kind of problems, so that children can overcome the problems brought by short video learning.

　　Balance child practice and child protection. The barrage, comments and live broadcast of short videos are more interactive, which is also a "double-edged sword". The advantage is that children have more opportunities to participate, think and interact when learning online, but the problem is that it may also bring risks to minors. Therefore, we should not only encourage minors to participate in more practice, but also do a good job in protecting the rights and interests of minors. In particular, parents and teachers need to enhance their awareness of child protection, improve their digital literacy and that of minors, so that every child can enjoy the fun of knowledge learning.

　　Text/Sun Hongyan

　　(Director, Institute of Children and Adolescents, China Youth Research Center)