Internet in China: Over 100 Million Youth Seek Fun Online

On April 25th, 2008, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the Research Report of China Youth Internet Behaviors. The report studies the online behaviors of 107 million China’s netizens under the age of 25. (Download the report in PDF format here)

According to the report, China’s youth netizens are more inclined to entertainment demand. The most used online serves for youth are IM(91.3%), online music(91.1%), online movie/video(82.9%), search engine(73.4%), online games(68.2%), online news(63.4%) and email(58%).

If compared with the average usage level of all Internet users, the usage rate of online games, online music and online movie/video among youth are much higher than average rate. For example, 68.2% China’s youth play online games, compared with that of 59.3% for all netizens. However, only 63.4% youth visit online news sites, 10.2 percentage lower than the average level of 73.6%.

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Young Internet users also have stronger desire to make friends and communicate with friends online, 55.9% of them have the experience of making friends through the Internet, and over 90% of them use IM tool, most likely QQ, to chat with friends online. One third of China’s youth have updated their blogs/spaces in last six months, higher than the average level of less than one fourth. For university students, even over half of them have updated blogs/spaces in last six months.

The report said, rural young users have some different online behaviors, they mainly use Internet for online chatting and online music, which have similar penetration rates as that of urban users. The usage of search engine, email and online news among rural young users are much lower than those of urban youth, ranging from 11 percentage to 19 percentage.

The report also proposed some suggestions to regulator, such as to strengthen the regulation on Internet cafe and to deal with the online game addiction problems among youth.