Internet use, depression, and cognitive outcomes among Chinese adolescents

Abstract

This study provides new evidence on how the growingly significant digital life shapes Chinese adolescents' cognitive and mental health outcomes based on their gender, parental education, and geographical location. Using the China Education Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey following 12-15-year-old students in 2013 and 2014, and individual fixed-effect models, we find that more time spent on the Internet is associated with higher selfreported depression scores. This negative impact on mental health is more substantial for girls, those with lesseducated parents, and those living outside the city center. The link between Internet use and cognitive development is almost null. Time spent online negatively affects Chinese young adolescents' subjective well-being but has little impact on their cognitive development. The link between Internet use time and subjective well-being also depends on gender, parental education, and the geographical location of those adolescents. The heterogeneous impacts of Internet use time offer crucial new evidence to the multiple dimensions of the digital divide among adolescents in China.

Associations of Diverse Internet Device Use and Activities with Depression in Chinese Adolescents: Gender and Geographical Differences

“…Research on adolescents in developed countries suggests an inconsistent relationship between daily Internet use time and depression. Some studies support the displacement hypothesis, suggesting that daily Internet use time or frequency is positively associated with the risk of depression [15,33,34]. Some studies found a nonlinear U-shaped relationship [35, 36].…”

“…Most studies on Internet use among Chinese adolescents used data from a time when only a minority of young people were online. They focused on Internet addictive behaviors or measured Internet use time as a continuous variable without observing the health effects of short durations or moderate use [14][15][16][17].…”

“…Some studies found a nonlinear U-shaped relationship [35, 36]. For instance, Moreno and colleagues reported that compared to low daily use (for example, <30 minutes), adolescents who use the Internet regularly (30 minutes to 3 hours) are at a lower health risk, while those who use the Internet excessively (>3 hours) are at high risk [35].Research on Chinese adolescents also examined the effect of Internet use time on the risk of depression among Chinese adolescents and found that adolescents with longer online durations reported higher levels of depression [15, 16]. However, they generally focused on long-duration Internet use and did not show the health effects of low or moderate daily use.…”

Discovering childhood in contemporary China: Toward a multisystems perspective

“…Considering the rapid spread of the internet and digital devices, Zhou and Ding (2022) then investigated how the growingly significant digital life shapes Chinese adolescents' cognitive and mental health outcomes. They found that spending more time on the internet may increase the self-reported depression scores of teenagers, and such effects vary by students with different features.…”

Physical Activity, Screen Time, and Academic Burden: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Health among Chinese Adolescents

“…Scholars have actively explored the decline in adolescent health [ 2 , 3 ], and reached a basic consensus that socio-environmental factors, rather than genetic (biological) factors, are at play. For example, some scholars discovered that socio-environmental factors are particularly important in a period of dramatic lifestyle changes and increasing risks to adolescent health levels [ 4 ]. Although a number of studies have examined the effects of physical activity, screen time, and academic burden on adolescent health [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], few studies have been conducted on Chinese samples.…”