Young Chinese parents embracing e-books for children

Chinese children are spending more time reading digital books as young parents are increasingly open to the idea, research shows.

The amount of time children under 9 spend reading e-books every day increased almost 20 percent to 24.3 minutes between 2016 and 2017, according to a joint study by e-book company Kada Story and teaching consultancy TAL Education Group.

A three-year study of 6,030 parents found that almost 70 percent said they are willing to let their children use mobile phones and tablets, while 25 percent of those born in the 1990s or later said they let their children spend more than 40 minutes a day on mobile devices.

Parents in first-tier cities are more likely to let their children use mobile devices, with children in Beijing spending almost 70 minutes a day using the gadgets.

“Digital reading is an important skill for children to master in this age of information explosion,” said Wang Jing, chief editor of Kada Story. “Children should be equipped with the basic ability of digital reading and digital text decoding.”

However, not all parents want their children to read digitally.

“I fear e-books will negatively affect my son’s attention span or expose him to inappropriate content,” said Xie Wenfeng, mother of a 7-year-old boy in Shanghai.

She said she believed print books are better for the eyes and do not affect sleep. “I also worry about possible addiction to e-books,” she added.