Primary school students are using the computer. (File Photo: VCG)

Chinese children are logging onto the internet at increasingly younger ages, with most school aged kids owning mobile phone, a new study finds.The report released in Beijing on Monday showed students are keen to complete their homework on network platforms and use WeChat and QQ to chat and read news.

The Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, together with the China Children and Youth Development Service Center and the China National Youth Palace Association, issued the Blue Book of Youth: Report on the Internet Use and Reading Practice of Chinese Minors.

The content of the Blue Book is mainly from a survey conducted in 2017 for 100 primary and secondary schools and off-campus educational sites in China. Data in the report showed that compared with the survey data from 2006 to 2017, the age when minors first used the internet in China continued to decline.

The survey results in the report also showed that the number of Chinese minors owning their own mobile phones has increased significantly and the proportion of minors surveyed who have their own mobile phones reached 73.1 percent.

Among the minors surveyed, the proportion of primary school students having their own mobile phones reached 64.2 percent, with junior high school students at 71.3 percent, and high school students at 86.9 percent.

The report shows that the number of minors learning online has increased and keeps growing.

Learning online helps to improve a minor’s learning efficiency. The new survey showed that 52.4 percent of minors believe that the internet has boosted their learning.

Reading activities by minors using mobile phones, computers and learning machines have increased dramatically. The three main types of books children read are literary classics, historical books, and books about popular science.