Of young people and Internet cafés

This study examines how adolescent exposure to 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 ranking of students from similar backgrounds with how they differ in level of exposure to wangba, the study finds that visiting wangba is not strongly correlated with the probability of students reporting either high or underachievement. While students without any exposure to wangba are substantially less likely than those who have to report academic underperformance, the result becomes random after matching when the logit regression is less model-dependent and vulnerable to the problems associated with missing data. Therefore, exposure to wangba alone is not systematically correlated with academic attainment and that much adult anxiety concerning adolescent visit to wangba is unnecessary.