If you think the War on Drugs is futile, China aims to one-up us by banning teenagers from playing more than three hours of video games a week:
China has a new rule for the country’s hundreds of millions of young gamers: No online videogames during the school week, and one hour a day on Fridays, weekends and public holidays.
China on Monday issued strict new measures aimed at curbing what authorities describe as youth videogame addiction, which they blame for a host of societal ills, including distracting young people from school and family responsibilities.
The new regulation, unveiled by the National Press and Publication Administration, will ban minors, defined as those under 18 years of age, from playing online videogames entirely between Monday and Thursday. On the other three days of the week, and on public holidays, they will be only permitted to play between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The government announcement said all online videogames will be required to connect to an “anti-addiction” system operated by the National Press and Publication Administration. The regulation, which takes effect on Wednesday, will require all users to register using their real names and government-issued identification documents.
Other details of enforcement weren’t made public, and phone calls to the National Press and Publication Administration went unanswered after business hours on Monday.
Now I am very far indeed from Chinese teenagers, but if they’re anything like American teenagers, Japanese teenagers, British teenagers, South Korean teenagers, etc., Communist China has just promulgated a law destined to be the most widely violated in its history.
Banning video games for teenagers would be like banning rock and roll for teenagers in 1967, or banning TV for teenagers in 1976. You’re trying to eliminate an activity that pretty much every single one of their peers participates in to some degree or another. Moreover, it’s an activity available in every single device they own that accesses the Internet, be it computer, smart phone, tablet, etc. Anything that supports a browser has a built-in game platform.
It’s pretty hard to conceive of a Communist Party dictate so likely to be so widely ignored or breed discontent in the heart of young Chinese. Remember, the East German police cracking down on listeners of a 1987 rock concert in Berlin was widely viewed as a key catalysts for turning young East Germans actively against the Communist regime.
It seems like a tiny thing amidst the widespread repression and cruelty of a regime that’s committing genocide against its Uighur minority and which killed some 65 million of its own people, but it could be the pebble that starts an avalanche.
Tags: China, Communism, Regulation, video games
specifically prohibited “online” video games. this leaves out cartridge games, console games, pc/mac games. not quite so restrictive as it appears, -though- much gaming is socialization these days; interacting with online players and such.
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