Data_Sheet_1_Of Young People and Internet Cafés.PDF

This study examines how adolescent experience in Internet cafés (known as wangba in Chinese) relates to academic attainment in urban, rural, and Tibetan schools of China. By documenting the frustrations teenagers express in their negotiations with adults surrounding access to and use of wangba and, by comparing self-reported academic standing of students from similar backgrounds with how they differ in their experience in wangba, the study finds that visiting wangba is not strongly correlated with the probability of students reporting either high- or under-achievement. While students without any experience in wangba are substantially less likely to report academic underperformance, the association disappears after matching when the logit regression model is less model-dependent and vulnerable to the problems associated with missing data. The paper concludes that visiting wangba alone is not systematically correlated with academic attainment, and that much adult anxiety concerning adolescent visit to wangba represents moral-technological panic and, offers a simplified explanation for educational problems that have deep macrosocial roots.

本研究探讨了中国城市、农村和藏区学校中青少年在网吧（中文称作网巴）的经历与学业成就之间的关系。通过记录青少年在争取进入和使用网巴过程中所表达的挫败感，以及比较具有相似背景的学生自我报告的学业成绩与他们在网巴经历中的差异，研究发现，访问网巴与报告高成就或低成就的概率并无显著相关性。尽管没有网巴经历的学生报告学业成绩不佳的可能性显著较低，但在使用对数回归模型进行匹配后，这种关联性消失，因为该模型对数据缺失问题较为敏感且易受模型依赖性的影响。论文得出结论，单独访问网巴并不与学业成就存在系统相关性，而许多成人对青少年访问网巴的焦虑主要源于道德-技术恐慌，并简化了对具有深刻宏观社会根源的教育问题的解释。