Survey: internet content classification urged
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Hu Xinhe, a citizen from Hubei Province, told China Youth Daily, "I have a daughter who is 9 years old and she started to use the internet last year. As she gets older, I am feeling more and more worried, because the older she is, the greater her curiosity is. It is impractical to force her to click the right kind of websites all the time. I hope that the government can introduce an internet content rating system to guide our children in using the internet correctly."
At the end of last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a draft regulation for communication network security which stipulated websites should be classified into five categories according to their significance to national and social development.
Recently the Social Investigation Center under China Youth Daily carried out an online survey on whether China should introduce internet content rating system, 1718 people participated. The results showed that 72.4 percent supported the classification.
Classification should be carried out to protect children.
According to the survey, 95.3 percent think that the current internet environment has a negative impact on the children. 36.4 percent expressed that the impact is particularly significant. Only 0.9 percent of participants held the opinion that there is no down side.
While being interviewed by reporters of China Youth Daily, Yuan Yongdao, a teacher from a middle school in Huazhou City, Guangzhou Province explained that "For teachers, now there are two things to worry about, students’ puppy love and surfing online. Generally, a class has about 80 students; almost half of them are internet-addicts. According to estimates, in Huazhou City nearly all the customers in the Internet/net bar are usually students, even during the Spring Festival around 80 percent of the customers are students."
Many parents hope that internet content can be classified as soon as possible in order to protect their children from inappropriate content.
The director of Project Department from China Youth Association for Network Development (CYAND), Shao Dehai thought, with the rapid development of the internet, introducing an internet content rating system is a necessary and important supervision measure.
As for the effects of classification, 44.5 percent of participants noted that it is very useful and effective to protect children, 16.4 percent held the opposite opinion. 39.1 percent believe it remains to be seen.
Shao Dehai stated that although classification can prevent the impropriate content on the internet from exposing to the children, it is not totally infallible. He added that parents, schools and society as a whole should cooperate with each other to guide and teach our children how to use internet properly and correctly.
