Boys play online games outside a market in Luohe city, Henan province. ZHU LIPING/FOR CHINA DAILY
Addiction among young people targeted as restrictions widened
Wu Yanlin, a teacher and mother of a high school student in Wuhan, Hubei province, was delighted when she heard the government was further limiting the time that minors can spend playing video games to three hours a week.
She said online games are a waste of time and badly affect young students' academic studies.
Last year, one of her students became addicted to video games when the high school that Wu teaches at started online-only courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The student's grades fell alarmingly, and it was hard for him to make up the time lost in studying for the all-important national college entrance exam, or gaokao, Wu said.
While the school has banned the use of phones in classrooms, most of Wu's students play video games at home, and their parents often find it difficult to prevent them from spending too much time online, she said.
Wu also has problems trying to prevent her son from overindulging in video games.
She said he became addicted to the games when he was in the ninth grade. "There were constant fights and arguments. Whenever we tried to stop him from playing games, he got really angry," she said.
"For several months, he refused to even talk to us. He would just unlock the door to his room after school and play games."
Wu added that family relations improved only when she placed fewer restrictions on her son's game time.
According to a notice issued by the National Press and Publication Administration on Aug 30, online game providers can only offer one-hour services to minors from 8 pm to 9 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
The administration said providers must not offer any form of service to users who fail to register and log in using their real identities. Press and publication administrations at all levels should supervise implementation of related measures and deal with companies that fail to put such requirements in place.
In 2019, the administration limited the time children younger than 18 could spend playing online games to 90 minutes on weekdays and three hours during weekends.
It said the latest restrictions were put in place to help prevent young people becoming addicted to video games.
In a separate question-and-answer session explaining the new rules, the administration said parents who suffer greatly when their children become addicted to internet games had asked for further restrictions and reductions in the time provided to minors by online gaming services.
The administration added that addiction to games among young people has seriously impacted their studies and their physical and psychological health. This has led to serious social issues and has become a source of worry among the public.
Extreme case
Tragedies can occur when young students become addicted to video games and lose their sense of reality.
In September 2018, a 13-year-old boy in Nantong, Jiangsu province, died after jumping from a fourth-floor room. His mother vehemently criticized the game Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, and said her son had jumped to see if he could survive like characters in that game.
Last year, an 11-year-old boy in Handan, Hebei province, and his sister, 9, jumped from a fourth-floor room, resulting in serious injuries to both children, who were addicted to online games and believed they could fly like the characters in them.
Lan Huiyun, a high school teacher in Shuozhou, Shanxi province, said most of his students play video games, and some have become addicted to them.
For students in less-developed areas, such games are the most accessible forms of entertainment and an important way to make friends.
A student in the second grade once asked Lan for leave after telling him that his grandmother had died. Lan became worried when the boy did not show up for class after a week. He contacted the student's parents, and it turned out that the boy had spent the entire week playing games in an internet cafe.
Lan said students who become seriously addicted to online games find all kinds of excuses to play them. They also spend little on food and clothes, saving their money for games.
He added that even when schools confiscate students' phones or call their parents, this does not solve the problem, as they can easily buy cheap secondhand phones.
Liao Yasong, a high school student in Changsha, Hunan province, said she has spent a lot on different games, which she began playing when she was 6.
She used her mother's ID card to register. Liao said playing games is a good way to pass the time and can relieve pressure from her studies.
Many of her male classmates are extremely angry with the new regulations and have said they will use every opportunity to play games and find possible loopholes until the restrictions have a real effect, Liao added.
Yue Chengxuan, 11, plays games at his mother's store in Jinan, Shandong province. QIAN HAN/FOR CHINA DAILY
Virtual exit
Wang Wenda, a psychology teacher at Ningxia University, said online games are designed to offer instant feedback and satisfaction, which makes them addictive.
In real life, students often do not benefit immediately from studying hard and are sometimes criticized by teachers and parents if they perform poorly, he said.
Students lack the ability to see the long-term benefits of working diligently at their studies. Enrolling at a good university and finding a high-paid job seem too distant for them, Wang said.
Online games can offer an escape for students where there is also social interaction and a hierarchical system, Wang said. Unlike the real world, where students can become weighed down for different reasons, they may excel and find solace in the virtual world, he said.
However, as they became addicted to such a world, students gradually lose interest in forming personal relationships, and their ability to learn and develop interpersonal skills suffers as a result, he said.
With implementation of the new regulations, parents and teachers should be less critical of students who become addicted to games. They also need to make more efforts to understand students' needs and help them form new relationships in the real world, he added.
Wide approval
Parents and teachers welcomed the new regulations.
Wang Jiaqi, mother of a fifth-grade student in Chaoyang district, Beijing, told Xinhua News Agency an addiction to online games hindered her son taking up other hobbies. It also affected his studies and damaged his health, especially his eyesight.
She said he stopped hockey training, seldom took part in outdoor sports or talked to his parents, and just stayed at home playing online games.
Mao Jingkun, father of a fifth-grade student in Beijing, also hailed the new restrictions.
"Preventing my daughter spending too much time online is like when my parents tried to stop me watching too much television," he said. "The only difference is that it was easy then, but really difficult now, as digital devices are much smaller and easier to hide than TV sets."
He said his daughter does not spend that much time on video games, but he often cannot stop her watching short videos, adding that a broader restriction should be introduced to cover the time young children can spend online.
Lan, the teacher from Shuozhou, said a stricter real-name and verification system should be adopted by games companies to prevent students using their parents' identities to log on.
Parents should offer more companionship to their children, so that they do not feel the need to find this in the virtual world, he added.
Moreover, schools, teachers and parents need to work together to help young students find hobbies they are passionate about, and conduct various after-school activities to ensure that students adopt healthier interests, Lan added.
Students from Fengtian High School in Shenyang, Liaoning province, are given eye checks in June. CHINA DAILY
Strict implementation
After the new restrictions were announced, some online gaming companies promised to continue improving services to better prevent minors becoming addicted to games.
Online giant Tencent said that in recent years it has developed and adopted several new technologies and functions to protect minors, and the company will resolutely support, abide by and proactively implement the new regulations.
Tencent said that in the second quarter of this year, players younger than 16 accounted for just 2.6 percent of its gross receipts for online games in China.
NetEase said it has always tried to protect minors and build a healthy internet environment for them, adding that it would abide by and actively implement the new regulations.
Media reports quoted Ding Lei, the company's CEO, as saying that spending by minors accounts for less than 1 percent of the company's revenue from games.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center at the China University of Political Science and Law, also welcomed the new restrictions.
He said the development of any industry should not base on sacrificing children's futures.
While minors are not the key groups or main revenue contributors for games companies, addiction to games among underage children often attracts negative publicity for such companies, Zhu said.
Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer with the Beijing Yunjia Law Firm, said the latest restrictions are aimed at implementing the revised Law on the Protection of Minors, which came into effect on June 1.
The law forbids internet companies from providing underage users with products and services known to be addictive. It also stipulates that restrictions must be introduced on access to internet services and duration of use for minors playing games and using livestreaming, social media and audio/video services.
To prevent minors using adults' IDs to register, gaming companies must strictly implement the real-name registration mechanism, for example by requiring users to go through facial recognition procedures every time they log on, Zhao said.
He added that government regulators should impose heavy fines on enterprises that fail to follow the new policy.
