Abstract
This study provides new evidence on how the growingly significant digital life shapes Chinese adolescents' cognitive and mental health outcomes based on their gender, parental education, and geographical location. Using the China Education Panel Survey, a nationally representative survey following 12-15-year-old students in 2013 and 2014, and individual fixed-effect models, we find that more time spent on the Internet is associated with higher self-reported depression scores. This negative impact on mental health is more substantial for girls, those with less-educated parents, and those living outside the city center. The link between Internet use and cognitive development is almost null. Time spent online negatively affects Chinese young adolescents' subjective well-being but has little impact on their cognitive development. The link between Internet use time and subjective well-being also depends on gender, parental education, and the geographical location of those adolescents. The heterogeneous impacts of Internet use time offer crucial new evidence to the multiple dimensions of the digital divide among adolescents in China.
Highlights
Teenagerhood is a critical stage of cognitive and psychological development
We follow the literature about the third level of the digital divide and ask whether and how the time spent online is associated with adolescents' subjective well‐being and cognitive development, in the context of the high level of physical Internet access among Chinese adolescents
Internet use time is positively correlated with cognitive ability scores and the level of depression
Summary
Teenagerhood is a critical stage of cognitive and psychological development. teenagers often adopt digital technology faster than parents, schools, and policymakers, and we are yet to realize the implications of the widespread new technology. People have different levels of access to products, services, and benefits of the Internet and computers because they have different motivational access, physical access (first‐level divide), digital skills, and usage (second‐level divide) (van Dijk, 2006). These differences or the first two levels of the divide are a result of social inequality and recreate or even reinforce inequalities in societies (van Dijk, 2006, 2020). We follow the literature about the third level of the digital divide and ask whether and how the time spent online is associated with adolescents' subjective well‐being and cognitive development, in the context of the high level of physical Internet access among Chinese adolescents
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