While a growing number of middle school students indulge in surfing on the Internet and on-line chat, many of their parents still do not know how to use a computer keyboard.

The widening gap has recently drawn much publicity following reports that several middle school students have left their homes without saying good-by and have remained missing for weeks in Internet-related cases.

The students are believed to have left their homes to meet those with whom they fell in love via the Internet, or to devote their time to Internet gaming.

Two junior middle-school girls in Shanghai, identified by their Internet names as "Rag Doll" and "Yang Xue", have been missing for two months in an Internet-related case, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News reported earlier this week.

Their parents, still in shock, have come to realize their own responsibility for the disappearance of their daughters.

In an e-mail to their daughters, the parents wrote "we are sorry to have treated you as just little kids who know nothing, and kept blaming you when we disagreed with."

"We know too little of your inner world."

The case of Rag Doll and Yang Xue, however, is just tip of the iceberg of Internet-related problems facing Chinese parents.

A 16-year-old schoolgirl in central China's Hunan Province left home last July for Baotou, an industrial city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, north China, to "look for love" she found online.

Earlier this year, two junior school students in Beijing disappeared from their homes and schools. One, who is still missing, is said to be infatuated with computer games in Internet bars, and the other, who was reported missing for two months, simply spent the time chatting online all night in Internet bars.

A recent survey on the influence of high technology on students has found, among other things, that using personal computers has become one of the major pastimes for urban middle school students in China, while their parents focus their attention on the academic performance of the children, ignoring the children's need for emotional exchange and parental guidance.

Xiong Qingnian, vice-president of the Institute of Higher Learning at Fudan University, said junior middle school students are too young to be able to cope with the complicated virtual world independently.

Some classmates of the two Shanghai girls said they liked surfing on the Internet, which gave them a sense of maturity and independence.

But for their emotional problems arising from their experiences via the Internet, the students complained, they could not consult their teachers or parents over those sensitive issues, due to their lack of understanding or computer-related knowledge.

Parents of junior middle school students in China were mostly born during the 1950s and 1960s and received little education due to the disastrous "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976).

Yang Xiong, president of the Juvenile Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said a rapid flow of information and knowledge has made it difficult for parents to be the sole authority of knowledge and information over their children.

The Internet has actually facilitated democracy in a family, Yang said, adding parents should regard their children as equal friends, which will make it easier for them to speak their minds.

"The parents, on the other hand, should enrich and update their knowledge to keep up with the times and narrow the generation gap, and offer their kids the right advice or help."

The number of Internet subscribers in China is close to 30 million, up about 50 percent over the same period of last year.

But the population of middle school students using the Internet is set to jump at breathtaking speed.

Computer courses are available to millions of students as young as eight years old in major Chinese cities, where personal computers are becoming another inexpensive household item like television sets.

(China Daily November 9, 2001)