Jia Meng used to keep a diary in Chinese. But one year ago, the 14-year-old girl from Heilongjiang began to write her diaries in English, because Jia found her mother was reading her diary secretly. She changed the language because her mother can't read English. "It's like killing two birds with one stone," said Jia. "My privacy(隐私) becomes safe and my English improves a lot."
Jia's mother is not the only mom who reads her child's diary. Recently, Renmin University of China had a national survey among over 2,300 parents. The results show that about 40% of parents read their children's secrets.
That's why many teenagers try to find ways to protect their privacy.
Wu Lei, 15, from Shanxi, keeps a diary, too. But he doesn't write it on paper. He writes online, which he thinks is perfectly safe because his parents "know nothing about the Internet".
Lu Huan, 13, from Guangdong, said her parents always secretly listened to the talk between her friends and her on the telephone in their room. To solve this problem, Lu asked her parents to buy her a cell phone.
"Parents want to know what is going on in their children's lives," said Shao Xiaozhen, a teenage expert in Beijing. "But sometimes they go about it the wrong way." Shao suggested the teenagers that instead of hiding their secrets, talking with parents is a better solution. "If your parents know that you are safe, they'll let you keep your secrets."
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