And they call it puppy love

Puppy love can be as much of a dilemma for parents as it is for the youths involved.

Yet a sampling of students in Shanghai has found that more than half of their parents don't oppose relationships for youngsters.

"When I entered my second year of studies in school, I found that some students began to fall in love," said Xu Jiajie, a 17-year-old student from Shanghai Luwan Senior High School.

"So I decided to carry out a survey on it," she said.

Xu spent nine months gathering information from a questionnaire, turning the 2,354 responses into a 10,000-word paper, which took first prize in the Shanghai Teenagers Science and Technology Innovation Competition.

"I hope students, parents and teachers can truly and objectively understand the issue of puppy love through the research, and can treat it more rationally and reduce conflicts," Xu said.

According to the survey, about 33 percent of the students - aged 15 to 18 from the city's high schools and vocational schools - said they were in love or had a special someone no one knew about.

On the flip side, 52 percent of parents said they did not oppose children's young love in school.