Beijing moves to “protect” children from the dangers of video games and social networks
The Chinese government, which in late August announced a law to limit children’s video game use to a maximum of three hours per week between 20:00 and 21: 00 on Fridays, weekends and holidays, tightening restrictions imposed in 2019 of one and a half hours a day, has now announced new rules that will force Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by the same company, ByteDance, to limit children under 14 to a maximum of 40 minutes a day.
The new teenage mode on Douyin will also mean a ban on use by the same age group between 22:00 and 6:00, and will require parents to make sure their children sign up for the app using their real names and ages using the official identification system launched last year. In teenage mode, in addition, the company will show content specifically selected for children, such as experiments, museum and gallery exhibits, as well as Chinese geography.
The move is part of the Beijing’s efforts to limit what it calls digital addiction, and will mean longer waiting times for the approval of new video games in what was until now the world’s largest such market by volume. Last August, a newspaper controlled by the state-run Xinhua News agency published and then deleted an article calling video games “spiritual opium” and singling out Tencent.
