Hu Wenxin, Mao Yufei, Huang Kevin, Sun Yanqi
School of Economics and Management, Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, Beijing 102617, China.
School of Labor Economics, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing 100070, China.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2022 Sep 27;12(10):364. doi: 10.3390/bs12100364.
Internet technology has been assimilated into children's educational system on an in-depth level. In particular, the number of children who use the internet for entertainment has been rapidly increasing. However, there has been a debate as to whether internet entertainment can have a detrimental impact on children's cognitive ability. This paper investigates the effect of internet entertainment on the cognitive ability of children in the Chinese context. The results show no evidence of associations between internet entertainment and children's cognitive ability. However, the additional analysis provides preliminary evidence suggesting that internet entertainment can be beneficial to children who use it for entertainment only on weekends but detrimental for those who spend leisure time online daily. In addition, the findings are robust in a variety of sensitivity tests. We also examine whether the effects of internet entertainment on children's cognitive ability in different family environments are heterogeneous. The findings suggest that parents' internet habits, parents' internet supervision, parental relationship, family education and living area play a moderating role in the relationship between internet entertainment and children's cognitive ability. This study offers useful insights into the current global debate on the nexus between internet entertainment and children's cognitive ability and also provides suggestions for parents, children, regulators and policymakers.
互联网技术已深入融入儿童教育体系。特别是，利用互联网进行娱乐的儿童数量一直在迅速增加。然而，关于互联网娱乐是否会对儿童认知能力产生不利影响一直存在争论。本文在中国背景下研究互联网娱乐对儿童认知能力的影响。结果表明，没有证据表明互联网娱乐与儿童认知能力之间存在关联。然而，进一步分析提供了初步证据，表明互联网娱乐仅对那些仅在周末用于娱乐的儿童有益，而对那些每天都在网上休闲的儿童有害。此外，这些发现在各种敏感性测试中都很稳健。我们还研究了互联网娱乐在不同家庭环境中对儿童认知能力的影响是否存在异质性。研究结果表明，父母的上网习惯、父母的上网监管、亲子关系、家庭教育和居住地区在互联网娱乐与儿童认知能力之间的关系中起调节作用。本研究为当前全球关于互联网娱乐与儿童认知能力之间关系的辩论提供了有益见解，也为家长、儿童、监管机构和政策制定者提供了建议。
