Chinese gamers under age 18 limited to 3 hours per week

[Morreion]

Three Hours a Week: Play Time’s Over for China’s Young Video Gamers (The Epoch Times, via Reuters)

The Chinese regime has forbidden under-18s from playing video games for more than three hours per week, a stringent social intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a growing addiction to what it once described as “spiritual opium.”

The new rules, published on Aug. 30, are part of a major shift by Beijing to strengthen control over its society and key sectors of its economy, including tech, education and property, after years of runaway growth.

The restrictions, which apply to any devices including phones, are a body blow to a global gaming industry that caters to tens of millions of young players in the world’s most lucrative market.

They limit under-18s to playing for one hour a day—8 p.m. to 9 p.m.—on only Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, according to the Xinhua state news agency. They can also play for an hour, at the same time, on public holidays.

The rules from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) regulator coincide with a broader clampdown by Beijing against China‘s tech giants, such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

The campaign to prevent what state media has described as the “savage growth” of some companies has wiped tens of billions of dollars off shares traded at home and abroad.

Gaming companies will be barred from providing services to minors in any form outside the stipulated hours and must ensure they have put real-name verification systems in place, said the regulator, which oversees the country’s video games market.

Previously, China had limited the length of time under-18s could play video games to 1.5 hours on any day and three hours on holidays under 2019 rules.

[Regolyth]

Wow, that sucks. I'm so proud to live in America, where the government can't reach down quite to that level. You know, there is a cut scene in Metal Gear Solid 3 that clocks somewhere around an hour and twenty minutes - LOL.

I will say that kids these days do probably play games too much. I take my children to soccer/baseball practice and I see siblings, of whichever child is playing, sitting around on phones and tablets. I was at baseball practice the other day for my youngest, and my oldest saw another kid playing on games on a phone. He asked for my phone to play games. I'm like "no, you don't need a phone. Bake in the hot sun like the rest of us and watch your brother practice."

I see the same thing at restaurants, in the grocery store and just walking down the road. Can we not just detach ourselves for just a shopping trip? We don't need the government to step in make sure children aren't rotting their brains, parents need to step up. It's okay if your child becomes bored; it helps with creativity.

I played way too many games in my youth (and, if possible, more than that as a young adult). By ten years old, I was decapitating people in Mortal Kombat. I'm not sure that a ten year old needs to be doing stuff like that, although it was way less graphic than today's games. My parents didn't monitor my play time nor what I played (although I played Mario Bros., kids today have Grand Theft Auto). They should have, but they didn't know. Video games were a new thing in the 80's/90's.

Having grown up with that and seeing how much time I wasted, I try to limit my children's playtime a lot more. They have set game days and only an hour each of those days. I do sometimes reward them with extra time, but I also take it away as punishment. This seems to be doing well for the time being.

Sorry, didn't mean to get on the soap box. Who left that thing laying out?

*looks at Kul*

Oh, and since we were talking about communist governments, let me leave this here.

[Rakul]

My Soap box!!! Gimme!