A small-scale study by Stanford University has found that teens in the US spend significantly more time using the internet than their Chinese counterparts but Chinese students are more likely to own an iPad.
The study was conducted by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), part of the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and investigated how the digital lives of high school students aged between 16 and 18 differed between the two countries.
Overall, teens in the US spent more time online than their Chinese counterparts, however, teens in China were more likely to embrace the latest technology.
Students from Silicon Valley spent almost twice as long on social networking sites (two hours per day). Beijing teens were more likely to go online to watch videos and films.
Forty-four percent of Chinese students surveyed owned an iPad compared to just 16 percent of students in the US.
More than 90 percent of students in Beijing said they have online friends that they have never met in person.
While some digital habits may differ between the two countries, teens in technology hotspots such as Silicon Valley and Beijing are embracing technology and their online lives.
"In certain urban locations, today's teens are native 'netizens'," said Marguerite Gong Hancock, associate director of SPRIE. "Most teens in our survey in both Palo Alto and Beijing have had mobile phones since the age of 12. They lead a large part of their daily lives online."
Technology and the internet are becoming increasingly important for young people. A separate study by the University of Maryland found that college students around the world become distressed and experienced withdrawal symptoms when deprived of their gadgets.
In June, a Chinese teenager was so desperate to get his hands on Apple’s new iPad 2 he allegedly sold his kidney to pay for the device.
The extremely small sample size of Stanford University’s study (which included 44 students from Palo Alto and 27 students from Beijing) means the findings should be taken with a grain of salt, but the results are interesting nonetheless.
