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Author	Ms ZHANG Jie
Organisation/Institution	Beijing Normal University Law School
Country	CHINA
Panel	Law and Society
Title	From “Family absence” to “Digital Escape”: A Mixed-method Research about Parental Alienation, Digital Substitution and Juvenile Delinquency in China's Specialized Schools
Abstract	In the digital era, the internet has profoundly reshaped human social interaction and reconfigured the forms, means, and pathways of juvenile delinquency. Prevailing explanations of juvenile delinquency often emphasize individual moral failure or isolated risk factors, neglecting how structural deficits in family support interact with the digital environment to shape pathways into serious misconduct. Specialized schools (zhuan men xue xiao) in China nowadays play an increasingly vital role in the nation’s response to juvenile delinquency and misconduct. Data was collected from a specialized school in eastern China, yielding 419 questionnaire responses and 35 in-depth student interview transcripts. Combined with a mixed-method survey, this study reveals a troubling pathway: when emotional bonds with caregivers’ fracture, adolescents increasingly turn to digital spaces for validation, often encountering harmful content or peer networks that normalize delinquent behavior. Quantitative analysis shows that students reporting low family communication (≤2 on a 0–5 scale) are significantly more likely to engage in excessive screen use (76%) and access violent or pornographic material (55%). Qualitative narratives further illustrate how online interactions substitute for absent familial support. Critically, 81% of those with poor family ties also exhibited high-risk digital behaviors, and many cited “peer influence” or “it looked fun” as motives for their offenses—tracing a clear arc from relational void to virtual entanglement to real-world harm. This dual vulnerability exposes gaps in China’s regulatory framework: a lack of enforcement mechanisms for emotional neglect and a high dependence on passive oversight rather than proactive algorithmic accountability. The paper argues that effective juvenile crime prevention requires dismantling the artificial divide between “family” and “digital” governance. It proposes integrating family-function and digital-behavior assessments into specialized school admissions, mandating targeted parental education for high-risk households, and imposing affirmative duties on platforms to shield minors from harmful algorithmic recommendations. By reframing delinquency as a systemic failure of care rather than an individual moral lapse, this research aims to promote a rights-based, systematically grounded vision for juvenile justice reform.
Biography	ZHANG Jie is a PhD candidate in Jurisprudence at Beijing Normal University Law School (expected 2027), holding an LLB and BA in Portuguese from BNU and an MA in Comparative Education from University College London. Her research lies at the intersection of educational law, juvenile justice, and children’s rights. As a young scholar in education and law, she is dedicated to integrating interdisciplinary research methodologies and putting them into practice. This research is based on her field survey data and focuses on special schools and special education for juvenile crime prevention in China. She presented in Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2025 Annual Conference, with her research titled Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: Awarded Extra Points Policy in College Entrance Examination for Ethnic Minority Candidates in Guangxi, China and received a Travel Award for youth academics from East Asia SIG. Committed to interdisciplinary yet legally grounded scholarship, she seeks to explore issues of rule-of-law governance within the field of education.