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our reporter qu zhongfang reports from beijing

this year marks the 30th anniversary of my country's full-function access to the internet and the 10th anniversary of the party central committee's goal of building a cyber power. as my country's first "blue book" focusing on the development of minors and the internet, the tenth volume has been officially published. on september 12, the new book launch of "youth blue book: china's minors' internet usage report (2024)" hosted by the institute of journalism and communication of the chinese academy of social sciences, the china social sciences academic press, and china business news was held in beijing.

at the press conference, ji weimin, professor of the school of journalism and communication of the university of chinese academy of social sciences, deputy director of the institute of industrial economics of the chinese academy of social sciences, president and editor-in-chief of china business news, and editor-in-chief of the blue book, introduced that since 2006, the survey project on the internet use of minors in china has completed 12 national surveys. since its first publication in 2010, the blue book has become a unique window and authoritative platform for central and local government departments, network management agencies, minors research institutions, new media agencies, and people from all walks of life to observe the use of minors on the internet.

ji weimin introduced that the "blue book" summarizes a total of 12 new characteristics and trends in young people's internet use in 2023, mainly including the younger age of teenagers first going online, leisure and entertainment as the main purpose, significantly improved internet search and content creation skills, enhanced awareness of negative effects, low penetration rate of internet literacy courses, and internet buzzwords, game social networking, and internet imitation becoming popular.

among them, the "blue book" shows that the age at which teenagers first go online continued to decline in 2023. the proportion of minors aged 10 or younger who first went online was 63.8%, an increase of 11.8% compared to 2022, and the trend of younger age has obviously intensified.

the basic skills of minors, such as searching the internet and creating online content, are constantly improving, and the age at which they acquire certain internet skills is also getting younger. ji weimin said that information literacy is a core skill required for digital survival.

the survey shows that the proportion of minors who can hardly use online searches to solve real-life problems has dropped significantly, from 25.3% in 2020 to 6.2% in 2024, indicating that minors are becoming more capable of using the internet to solve their own problems. the survey shows that the proportion of minors who can use audio and video to create online is also increasing year by year. in 2020, it was 30.9%, and in 2024 it rose to 50.9%. the internet has become an important scene for minors to express themselves.

it is worth noting that teenagers' internet use is an important part of the relationship between families and children. from the frequency of disputes and quarrels between minors and their parents over internet use, data shows that 50.7% of minors have had disputes with their parents over internet use sometimes or occasionally, and 6.4% of minors have frequent disputes, indicating that this issue needs to be highly valued in terms of improving the internet literacy of families and guardians. family relationships have a significant impact on minors' internet use behavior. relevant data show that among minors who spend less than half an hour online per day, 20.4% of them have good family relationships, while minors who spend more than three hours online per day have poor family relationships, with a relatively high proportion of not very good and very bad, at 33.9% and 26.8% respectively. this shows that good family relationships are related to the management of minors' internet use time.

in the past two years, ai technology has developed rapidly and been widely used, which has also subtly influenced the cognition of minors. ji weimin said that on the one hand, ai technology and ai devices have gradually attracted the attention of minors, but on the other hand, the ai ​​gap has gradually emerged, and the ai ​​literacy of the youth group needs to be improved urgently. the "blue book" shows that some minors have begun to gradually use ai devices to surf the internet, of which 20.5% in urban areas and 8.1% in rural areas use ai devices. while enjoying the convenience brought by this artificial intelligence, minors also need to realize that it may bring some potential harm and learn to prevent and deal with some risks. only 19% of minors have taken special internet literacy courses.

ji weimin emphasized that it is common for minors to imitate others online, and the internet has given rise to social anxiety and confusion of values. the survey shows that 86.7% of minors will interact, discuss and share online content with their classmates in real life. about two-thirds of minors believe that they cannot integrate into their circle of friends if they do not know some popular ways to play online. this shows that the complex online information may become a source of difficulty for minors to distinguish between true and false, blindly follow trends, and be easily misled. 13.5% of minors believe that going online has made them know more negative information about society and people.

in addition, the actual usage rate of the youth mode is still low, and further optimization is needed from the perspectives of concept, content, and technology. the blue book survey shows that only 6.6% of users always use the youth mode. the popularity and actual use of the youth mode are not ideal and need to be further optimized. the youth mode of most platforms still adopts strong supervision at the conceptual level, which makes minors feel not very good when using the internet. they feel restricted and do not bring them greater optimization. in terms of content, there is a lack of high-quality content that truly meets the needs of minors to surf the internet. at the technical level, it is still mainly based on filtering sensitive words and sensitive images, and lacks a more intelligent and personalized push mechanism. these problems need to be solved as soon as possible.

in the face of the current situation and existing problems of internet use by minors, ji weimin said that it is necessary to create an ai-enabled "companion internet" to promote the healthy growth of minors. in this regard, the blue book calls for all sectors of society to work together in three aspects to truly realize the development of the internet "based on minors, friendly to minors, and empowering minors."

first, we must fully assess the opportunities and challenges that the new generation of ai technology poses to minors’ use of the internet, and focus on improving minors’ ai literacy. ai education innovation and the improvement of minors’ ai literacy require joint assessment by the state, society, schools, and families, and joint guidance and education for minors. we can establish literacy standards, clarify the obligations of all parties, build an ai literacy training system, seize the development opportunities brought by the new generation of generative artificial intelligence technology, and jointly promote the popularization of ai literacy education, so as to build a safe and effective growth and learning environment for minors.

second, we should strengthen internet education for young children, attach importance to the role of peer demonstration, and reasonably help minors establish correct internet values. the early stage of internet use for young children is a critical period for establishing good internet habits. at present, the trend of young children using the internet is becoming more and more obvious. peer groups are important objects for minors to imitate and learn from, so we should attach importance to the role of peers in the process of minors using the internet, provide role models for minors, and subtly help minors improve their internet literacy.

third, encourage platforms to explore the use of ai technology to create a personalized companionship model for teenagers. on the one hand, encourage all platforms to fully explore the new generation of generative artificial intelligence technology, develop more targeted network filtering software, parental monitoring applications, such as using a pure search mode that combines information flow + search, to generate a pool of high-quality content that meets the needs of minors of different ages, and establish a personalized companionship model for teenagers of different ages, so as to achieve a transition from being usable, effective, and effective to being easy to use and love to use. on the other hand, all platforms should also provide enough customized and flexible content based on the internet usage characteristics of minors of different ages to meet the needs of minors for autonomy and freedom of exploration in the internet space. in addition, platforms should also explore the use of ai technology to intelligently identify the online behavior and psychological state of minors, timely discover and warn of abnormal behavior, help parents and platforms to carry out targeted intervention, and establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism to timely adjust the management strategy and technology recommendation mechanism according to the growth changes and usage feedback of minors.