"Prodigy" or "Naughty Child"? - Child differentiation in the age of the Internet.
Tong Nannan |China Rural Governance Research Center, Wuhan University.
Visiting relatives during the Chinese New Year, and the children in the family being pulled out to show their talents are the reserved programs of the Spring Festival every year. I was long past the age when I was forced to come to power, and my little nephews and nephews were not so lucky.
My little nephew is 9 years old and clever, but I was surprised by his performance, and he sang an adapted song with his own lyrics. The song is adapted from a passage in the Douyin explosion divine comedy "Compendium of Materia Medica" in the past two years, replacing the names of Chinese herbs in the original song with various train models to make up a song "Train List", but it is also catchy. Children under the age of 10 can fill in the words like this, express their love for the train, and perform generously in front of relatives and friends, which is enough to make relatives praise a "prodigy".
I was intrigued by my little nephew's creative process, and he told me that I learned these on TikTok. The little nephew is a little train fan, and he likes to search for all kinds of train-related information on Douyin, **popular science small**, and sometimes he will be pushed some high-popularity**. Once he was pushed to the cover of "Compendium of Materia Medica" on Douyin, and saw someone adapting the lyrics, I felt very interesting, it didn't look very difficult, I also learned to try it, and in order to make up the lyrics, I also recorded ** to ask my own friends.
With that, he opened his Douyin account and showed me their Douyin group chat. The little nephew's Douyin account was opened in 2020, and the account has more than 100 fans and dozens of friends, all of whom he gradually met in the process of searching for train-related **, many of which are fans of the little train who are close to his age, and there are also some adults who also love trains. The little nephew's account has posted more than 20 manuscripts, all of which he shoots and edits various trains**, and there are a lot of subtitles for the soundtrack. He clicked on a ** to popularize the model of the train, the livery, when it was in service, and what happened to it. Looking at his immature face, I couldn't help but feel a little bit of emotion that the back waves of the Yangtze River pushed the front waves. As an Internet native, his application of the Internet has surpassed that of me, a post-95 generation. However, his mother stipulated that the mobile phone could only play for fifteen minutes at a time, and after a while, he consciously turned off Douyin and returned the mobile phone to his grandmother, took out the drawing book and pestered me to teach me to draw.
When it was my nephew's turn to perform, the situation was out of control. Four 10-year-olds snuggled up on the sofa playing with their phones, ignoring their parents' greetings. The three older children were eating chicken online, bursting out with two foul words from time to time, and even blaming each other for losing the game; The youngest 7-year-old niece took a selfie in the mirror, recorded with an exaggerated filter on Douyin**, and from time to time imitated the bewitching adult women in the short** poses. Parents say that these "little ancestors" ignore people, don't even want to get off the sofa for dinner, and are addicted to the Internet and can't extricate themselves, let alone say any talent shows. The aunt and sister-in-law were a little embarrassed, and half-explained and half-complained to us: "Now the mobile phone is really deadly, the child can't control the mobile phone all day long, don't let play and lose his temper, don't write or eat homework, beat and scold, I don't know what to do!" ”
After shouting a few times to no avail, the cousins and sisters-in-law couldn't sit still, and stepped forward to snatch their mobile phones, and sure enough, several children cried and made a fuss, and one of them even said that he was going to run away from home. The elders in the family had to comfort: "Now the children are like this, teach them slowly, give them the mobile phone first, and then talk about it after eating." ”
In the chaos, the little nephew raised his head from the picture book and quietly bit my ear: "Sister-in-law, why are they so disobedient?" Playing with your phone all the time is not good for your eyes, and you don't eat yet, which is really rude. ”
Looking at the well-behaved appearance of my little nephew, I can't help but think about a question, how can there be such a big difference between children of the same age and the same early contact with the Internet?
The biggest difference between the two is the home education environment.
First of all, from the perspective of material conditions, my cousin's family is well-off, his parents are businessmen, his family has real estate in the county and urban areas, and he has paid for the expensive private kindergarten fees for his little nephew for a long time. My cousin relied on his parents' connections to make project investments in the county, and his profits were not bad, and he changed a car of more than 400,000 yuan last year, and he was financially able to provide support for the fine parenting of his little nephew. Although he is a child in a small county, his little nephew has been to Shanghai Disneyland since he was 7 years old, and since he was 5 years old, he has traveled around the country with his parents every summer, and his knowledge is far beyond that of ordinary children, and his love for trains has also been cultivated in long-term travel.
After giving birth to a second child, in order to pay for higher parenting costs, cousins and sisters-in-law work abroad all year round, and the children are basically left to the care of grandparents, which is a typical left-behind family in the county.
From the perspective of parenting ability, my cousin and sister-in-law both have bachelor's degrees and are quite concerned about their children's education.
My cousin-in-law joined the Bao Ma group very early and bought a lot of preschool books to learn about parenting. In order to better educate the children, the cousin-in-law resigned from her job as a clerk and became a full-time wife at home after giving birth, and made her own parenting guide, she paid attention to the attraction of the Internet to children very early, and understood the truth that it is better to block than to sparse, and consciously guided the use of the Internet when the little nephew was 6 years old, and strictly controlled the time. In order to give the little nephew a relatively clean and safe network environment, my cousin specially equipped him with a mobile phone, and carried out big data tuning for the main software, such as Douyin, my cousin said, "I'm afraid that Douyin will recommend messy things to him, so I have been brushing popular science and cultural and educational ** after registering the number, so that big data can remember, of course, this is not 100% insurance, so every time he plays with his mobile phone, I am on the side to take care of it, and I have a "ward round" afterwards , confirm that it is harmless and let them play together. ”
At the same time, in order not to let the little nephew have a negative feeling of being interfered with, the cousin and sister-in-law often share and discuss the train-related content with them as participants, and they are the little nephew's loyal friends and playmates, and it is also with their encouragement that the little nephew implements the song adaptation plan. In my cousin's view, parents are the first guides of their children, and these young people in the late 80s are also the Internet generation, and they are well versed in the attributes of the double-edged sword of the Internet, so they have made great efforts to pursue advantages and avoid disadvantages.
Cousins and sisters-in-law don't have so much time and energy to create an online greenhouse for children, although they are both born in the late 80s and 90s, they entered the society early after completing junior and senior high school education, and they all grew up in a daze, not to mention how to educate children. And in the use of the Internet is not taboo, the eldest nephew played chicken for the first time (the game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds") was taken by his cousin, and the cousin-in-law often used the mobile phone as a second nanny when he couldn't take care of the two children, and the little niece would take the mobile phone to brush the short ** when he was old. Although they have been reminded by the school many times, they also realize that their children cannot play with mobile phones for a long time, but the accumulated habits are difficult to change, and after several unsuccessful attempts at violent discipline, they will not be able to do it, let alone grandparents. In addition, my cousin-in-law also said that although playing games may not be very good, I can also learn some things in the Internet, and the children are very old-fashioned, and they talk back to their parents, and what they say is "very reasonable", at least they will not become stupid. As a result, in such intentional or unintentional indulgence, children become more and more addicted to the Internet and become Internet "naughty children".
On April 21, 2022, the "Chinese Youth in the New Era" released by the **Information Office** pointed out that "at the end of 2020, the number of minors between the ages of 6 and 18 in China reached 1800 million, and the Internet penetration rate of minors has reached 949%, the Internet has become an indispensable way of life, growth space, 'sixth sense' for contemporary teenagers", in today's Internet has penetrated into thousands of households, the use of the Internet by teenagers and children has always been a matter of keen concern to the society.
Is the Internet friend or foe? All kinds of phenomena show that they are also friends and foes, and the Internet is the enemy - the spread of information without thresholds makes the content of good and bad have a negative impact on the growth of adolescents and children; The Internet is a friend – the transmission of information across time and space has provided children and adolescents with an unprecedented wealth of knowledge. There is only one information filter between friend and foe conversions. To this end, the country has made many attempts, such as major game manufacturers to limit the gaming time of minors, Internet cafes to prohibit minors from entering, and schools to carry out mobile phone management campaigns, but the last mile of youth network management has always been difficult to solve, that is, families outside the public areas such as society and schools.
However, in the past few years of research, many primary and junior high school teachers have complained to me that even though the school is in charge of the left and right, from time to time surprise inspections, trying to curb the situation of mobile phones entering the campus, but the children are still beaten back to their original shape as soon as they go home. One of the fifth-grade class teachers said, "How should they play or how to play, they can't shirk it from their parents, social restrictions are useless, playing games with parents' ID cards can bypass the rules, what else can the school do?" Every time I come back from vacation, my studies will inevitably decline, and I don't learn to play games and play mobile phones at home. ”
The cruel fact is that the cousin and sister-in-law are the majority of the small county, while the cousin's family is a relatively minority. Therefore, on a practical level, most families, as the last and most important web filter, are difficult to function as they should. The batch of "naughty children" and a small number of "prodigies" relying on a wealthy family environment constitute the differentiation of children in the county in the Internet era.