Higher-achieving college students access the Internet less frequently than their lower-performing counterparts, showed findings from a survey by a Ho Chi Minh City university lecturer.

Students with a poor academic record spend an average of 31.9 hours a week – or 4.6 hours a day – surfing the Internet while students in a higher academic standing stay in cyberspace for just 17.6 hours on a weekly basis, Tran Minh Tri, a lecturer at Nong Lam (Agriculture-Forestry) University, said in his recent survey.

The survey was carried out on 989 Nong Lam students who answered questions on Internet-related behaviors.

Very few high-performing respondents said they go online for more than four hours a day whereas half the low-performing ones admitted to accessing the Internet for longer periods every day.

The survey revealed that seventy-five percent of the students said they browse the net daily, with the number of males dominant over female surfers.

It also revealed that students navigate the Internet more often when they are about to graduate.

The Internet has many negative influences on their lives regardless of providing such benefits as news and reference materials, respondents said in the survey.

“About 62.7 percent said the Internet occupies their time for other tasks,” Tri cited survey results. “Many students complained they often feel tired, perform worse in classes, develop conflicts with friends, and skip lessons due to Internet addiction. Some even reported that they were cheated and physically abused or had sex with prostitutes as a result of the Internet.”

School children obsessed with online games

Local psychologists voiced their concerns at a seminar in the southern city late last month over the adverse effects of the Internet on school children, many of whom seem to indulge too much in online movies and games.

Nguyen Thi Phuong, who has a master’s in psychology, quoted her own survey on students at a middle school in Hanoi as saying that 94.1 percent of the respondents said they get connected to chat with friends, play online games, listen to music, and watch movies before thinking of studying.

Phuong pointed out that online games have dug a deep hole in children’s minds.

She said that many kids, when asked to draw themselves in their favorite world, drew either game characters battling each other or their own incomplete faces with big scary red eyes that looked exactly like these of angry game characters.

Psychologist Huynh Thi Kim Tuyen said that many elementary school students in the southern province of Ben Tre also get addicted to online games unsuitable for their age.

“The Internet has helped these kids to think quicker but many have ignored their studies because they immerse themselves too much in inappropriate games like one that includes marriages between men and women,” Tuyen said.

She went on to explain that this behavior stems from the negligence of parents who are usually too busy to take proper care of their children..

“Many parents do not pay enough attention to their kids,” she said. “They simply feel relieved when their kids sit still and do not get naughty.”

Parents should work to build close attachments among family members and show the kids how to take advantage of the Internet rather than abuse it, she advised.