China cuts children’s gaming to 3 hours a week

Beijing is restricting children’s access to the ‘mental opium’ of online gaming to a maximum of three hours a week.

Children in China are having their on-screen time limited. Picture: iStock.

Goodbye, Minecraft; farewell, Fortnite: China is to crack down on the “mental opium” of online gaming by restricting children’s access to a maximum of three hours a week.

In what will be a blow to the web-based social lives of an estimated 90 per cent of Chinese young people, Beijing said it was acting to protect the “mental health” of minors. Gaming sessions for children will be restricted to one hour between 8pm and 9pm on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and public holidays. Outside these hours, gaming companies will be banned from providing web-based games to youngsters in any form, according to the notice from the National Press and Publication Administration. The rules, which take effect tomorrow (Wednesday), are designed to address “the excessive use of and even addiction to online gaming by the minors”, the notice said.

State media say that more than 62.5 per cent of China’s underage web users regularly play online games. Parents have complained of the time their children waste on gaming and the money they squander. Health officials blame online gaming for the poor eyesight prevalent among young people, and a professor specialising in juvenile crimes has called it “mental opium”. “They cannot pull themselves out of it,” Li Meijin, of the People’s Public Security University of China, told state media.

An earlier rule limited daily gaming activities to no more than three hours on public holidays and no more than 1.5 hours on other days. The administration said parents had found the rules too lax and demanded further restrictions.

The Times