SCREENED CYBERSPACE: During this year's winter vacation in China's northeastern Liaoning Province, many primary and middle schools in Jinzhou City opened Internet rooms on campus where only child-friendly content was accessible (LI TIECHENG)

A national survey of children's Internet surfing habits showed troubling signs of a deepening addiction to online games and pornography, sparking fears of an attendant surge in juvenile crime.

The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based China Youth & Children Research Center, interviewed 24,000 netizens under the age of 25 from five cities between May 2008 and May 2009. According to the survey's recently published findings, respondents spent on average 37.1 hours per week surfing the Internet, more than double the national average of 16.2 hours.

A separate report by the China Internet Network Information Center said the country's juvenile online population had reached 117 million by the end of 2008, accounting for 39.5 percent of all of China's netizens. The growth in young people going online was staggering last year, increasing 56.1 percent from 2007.

More than 48 percent of the young respondents to the survey said they had visited pornographic websites; 43.39 percent had received emails containing violent or pornographic images or fraudulent offers inciting recipients to commit an offense; and 14.49 percent had lost money or suffered mental trauma after falling for an online scam.

Researchers who conducted the survey said online pornography and violence are the two biggest threats to the psychological health of young people.

"Pubescent children are particularly interested in the other sex and are easily attracted to online pornography. They are at high risk of acting out what they see online, including sexual assault, rape and child molestation," Sun Hongyan, a juvenile expert from the China Youth & Children Research Center, told Guangming Daily.

She added that long-term exposure to the slayings, crashes, explosions and shootings so prevalent in Internet games can lead to malformed moral standards in juveniles, who will mistakenly believe that it is rational and acceptable to be violent in the real world.

ADULTS ONLY: A government supervisor (center) checks customers' identification cards in a Shanghai Internet cafe to prevent juveniles from entering (WU JINGDAN)

Hao Xianghong, Secretary General of the China Youth Internet Association, said children are also most often the victims of online violence and pornography. He said 47 percent of non-academic information in cyberspace is pornographic, which has been made more accessible by technology.

Just one more game

The survey found 52.5 percent of China's Internet game players are under 22 years old. Playing online games has become the third most popular use of the Internet among primary and middle school students.

Chen Chen, a legal expert with the China Youth & Children Research Center, said playing those games could harm physical and mental health. Indulgence in online games could cause myopia, insomnia, muscle soreness, retarded brain growth, unbalanced hormone levels, stress headaches, anxiety and dry eyes, Chen said.