At one point in June last year, Zeng Jinpeng was more than 10,000 yuan in debt to a smart phone app. The 23-year-old Shanghai citizen pays for his online purchases of food, clothes, and travel with Huabei, a virtual credit card that's part of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. 's spreading stable of e-commerce. His spending often used to go beyond his only source of income: the 8,000-yuan monthly allowance from his parents. He tried to repay the debt in installments(分期付款), even borrowing from Jiebei, another Alibaba-owned credit service, but eventually his mother and father had to help him out.

Zeng's story is typical of members of China's Generation Z. These young consumers，born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, have little income and therefore actually no credit history. Yet they have easy access to credit from a variety of banks, financial-tech companies, and peer-to-peer(P2P)Lenders(网络借贷平台), plus other channels that are unregulated. The spending habits of the young in particular are causing concern. In some cases the younger generation is being tempted to overconsume via credit secured through technology. Unsecured consumer leading has expanded 20% a year in China since 2008. The amount of consumer finance available through the Internet will more than double, to 19 trillion yuan, by 2021, from 7.8 trillion yuan last year. Official data showed that almost 70%. of China's 50 million P2P borrowers were younger than 40.

As for Zeng, he's trying to be a little more frugal, even though he is now trying to earn a little by himself. “I deliberately set the credit limit at a lower level,” he say, “so that hopefully I can better match my income with spending.”

Regulators(监管部门)last year launched a breakdown on peer-to-peer lending, which, besides being a source of easy credit, had also become a popular investment tool. The sector has shrunk to less than half its peak size as a result of forced shutdowns.

A first year undergraduate (本科生) student in Chengdu, recently complained (抱怨) online that her mother refused to raise her monthly allowance to 4,500 yuan ($633) even when she said her current allowance (津贴，生活费) 2,000 yuan was not enough to cover her expenses, sparking a debate on how much money a college student needs per month. One expert shares his views on the issue with China Daily: Students should pursue education, not comfort.

Even for a college student studying in a big city in China, 2,000 yuan is enough to cover all his or her monthly expenses. In fact, for a college student in Chengdu, a monthly allowance of 2,000 yuan is more than enough. According to a survey (调查), the average monthly expense for an undergraduate in cities other than Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou was less than 2,000 yuan in 2019; for Chengdu, it was 1,900 yuan.

Claiming that she can hardly afford new clothing and cosmetics (化妆品) with her 2,000 yuan monthly allowance, the undergraduate student in Chengdu criticized (批评) her mother for refusing to raise her pocket money. Her “meager” allowance, she said, prevented her from buying branded goods that her roommates enjoyed.

By the time a person enters a college, she or he should have developed a sensible consumption (消费) habit. And a youth should adjust her or his consumption according to her or his family income. On a deeper level, the money they spend in college should depend on how much they value their parents' hard work. Besides, some college students could take up part-time jobs to meet their needs if they feel their parents don't or can't give them enough money. In this way they can also learn to meet the requirements of life in the future and develop sensible consumption habits. More importantly, they should always bear in mind that education is their top priority in college.

A recent report from the United Nations group UNESCO warns that using technology in classes may not help as much as many people believe. The report suggests that technology should be used less in schools, and that smartphones should be banned from classrooms.

The goal of the new report was to improve how technology is used in education. It says that technology can be helpful, but it shouldn’t be the focus. “Too much attention on technology in education usually comes at a high cost,” the report says.

These days, it’s common for students to use computers or tablets (平板电脑). In many places, it’s normal for students to look up information on the internet rather than using books. UNESCO claims that technology changes so fast that it’s hard to study how it really affects students.

The new report says that many of the studies show that technology helps students come from rich countries. As classes moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of technology in education grew even more quickly. Many students were forced to study at home, using video calls to communicate with their teachers. But the report points out that around 500 million students were unable to take part in online classes. That’s one example of what UNESCO says is a larger problem — that the advantages of technology aren’t evenly shared. People and countries with less money are often left out.

UNESCO admits that technology can help in many ways. It can allow students to learn in ways that are more interesting; it can also help teachers explain difficult ideas; it can also help students who have special needs. But UNESCO says technology can also be very perturbing. One study showed that when students use phones in class, it can interfere with their learning. Even so, less than 25% of the world’s countries ban phones in schools.

The report suggests that the best way to learn is still to work closely with teachers. Working with other classmates also helps students learn. UNESCO says that most schools should spend more money on things like books, classrooms, and teachers.