Virtual, Actual Worlds to Net-surfing Kids

For children who can afford it, the Internet can be either a virtual world to tuck themselves into or an outlet through which to reach out to the actual world.

Either way, those kids with the money and time to spend on surfing the net may still feel caught up, if not lost, during the electronic shuttle between their virtual and real worlds.

Zz’eem: a window for outside world

"No power again!" Yasser al-Za'eem complained after rushing home from school only to find that his Gaza Strip residence had no electricity because of an ongoing Israeli blockade and that there was no way for him to surf the Internet.

Not allowed to leave the Shatti refugee camp where he lives, the14-year-old Gaza boy's life had seemed to be a pool of stagnant water before his father bought him a computer. Since then, the Internet has become Za'eem's only entertainment and main source of information about the world beyond Gaza.

"For me, the Internet is a way to break the Israeli blockade and a window to know the outside world," the boy said.

As long as there is electricity, Za'eem and his siblings surf the Internet and in a way, they are obsessed with it.

For many children in Gaza like Za'eem, the Internet is the only way to make friends from outside of his refugee camp and gain contact with the world at large under the strict Israeli blockade that includes intermittant power outages.

"I envy them," he said of his friends outside of Gaza. In Za'eem's imagination, traveling to other parts of the world as freely as on the Internet means everything for freedom.

Li Yuqi: a way of life

Za'eem can never imagine that some children like Li Yuqi, a Chinese girl living in Los Angeles, prefer to surf the Internet all day even if they were free to travel around the world.

Every day after school, Li Yuqi spends almost four hours online.

"Besides studying, playing games, chatting with friends, I keep on writing novels on the Internet, "the lively girl said.

The middle school student turned to MSN, "Facebook" and other social network web sites to maintain contact and exchange information with her friends.

"We invite each other online to go shopping and have parties," she said.

The girl's chat log is difficult for grownups to understand because it is crammed with emoticons, interpunctions and many abbreviations that are part of the "Internet language."

Li Yuqi recently started writing to her teacher via e-mail. Thegirl prefers that type of contact because she feels more inclined to sincerely express herself online rather than through face-to-face dialogue.

The girl says the Internet is so important to her that "it influences my interests, hobbies, even the way of talking."

"The Internet is my life," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 11, 2009)