Abstract
Amid the social background of China where the Internet has penetrated into every corner of an adolescent’s life, we were concerned of the role of Internet usage in influencing the educational gap among social classes. We investigated the mediating role of Internet usage preference for entertainment in the relationship between the family socioeconomic status (SES) and the adolescent’s academic achievement and explored the moderating role of future orientation in the relationship. A total of 614 junior high school students were recruited to complete a questionnaire survey, including questionnaires for family SES, Internet usage preference, and adolescent future orientation. The results showed that (1) the relationship between family SES and academic achievement was mediated by Internet usage preference for entertainment; (2) the indirect effect was moderated by future orientation, such that the negative association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was only indicated in adolescents with low future orientation; and (3) the direct association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was moderated by future orientation.
Highlights
IntroductionSocioeconomic status (SES) is used to describe and rank valuable resources (such as education, wealth, and social status, etc.) owned by families (Matthews and Gallo, 2011)
Socioeconomic status (SES) is used to describe and rank valuable resources owned by families (Matthews and Gallo, 2011)
This study showed that family socioeconomic status (SES) positively predicts academic achievement, which is consistent with previous conclusions (Barr, 2015; Li et al, 2020)
Summary
Socioeconomic status (SES) is used to describe and rank valuable resources (such as education, wealth, and social status, etc.) owned by families (Matthews and Gallo, 2011). The relationship between family background and educational achievement is one of the important indicators to measure educational equity (Li and Qiu, 2018). In this context, it is deemed important to explore the influence mechanism of family SES on adolescents’ academic achievement and discuss the corresponding intervention strategies. With the rapid development of information technology and the rapid popularization of the Internet, the use of information technology to achieve a higher level of education equity has Social Classes and Educational Gap become an established national policy in China. Build an effective mechanism to expand the coverage of high-quality education resources by means of information technology and gradually narrow the gap among different regions, urban-rural and inter-schools.”. More and more scholars have shifted the focus of the problem from the “physical gap” between social classes, that is, the penetration rate of the Internet, to the “usage gap” of the Internet (Wang and Sui, 2014)
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