Analyzing online impression management ability of Chinese teenagers

Abstract

Internet and new media have been highly integrated into the growth process of teenagers, along with their learning, life and social interactions. It becomes an important part of Internet literacy to mold and manage one’s impression to others. In this paper, we study the influential factors of online impression management ability from personal factors, domestic factors and scholastic factors. We design questionnaire for survey, and then interview with teenagers, their parents and teachers. By analyzing the collected data, we get the main findings as follows: (1) Among the personal factors, gender, year group, the proficiency of Internet use skills, the self-efficacy of Internet usage, and the number of Internet access devices have impact on the ability of managing online impression, while other factors such as grades and household registration have no explicit impacts. (2) Among the domestic factors, family atmospheres, the frequency of discussions on the content of Internet information between parents and children, the frequency of parental intervention concerning Internet activities, and the degree of closeness between students and their parents have effects of different degree on the ability of managing Internet impression and its components. However, the degree of parents’ education background and the family income have no significant influences. (3) Among the scholastic factors, the frequency of the discussion on Internet information and content between peers as well as the perception of students in the Internet technology literacy class have different effects on the middle school students’ online impression management ability. This research could help teenagers to improve the ability of online impression management which is important for their learning and life in Internet era.