Summary of proposed limits by Twitter user @Orikron
🇨🇳 China is set to limit the amount of time children spend on the internet:
16 to 18 - 2 hours
8 to 16 - 1 hour
Under 8 - 40 minutes
No internet access on children’s devices from 10pm-6am
Parents will be allowed to opt out of the time limits for their youngsters.
Edit: additional info from @qwename@lemmygrad.ml:
Parents can change default time limits
Reminder to rest every 30 minutes
Apps not subject to time limits include:
- Emergency-related (safety, emergency calling etc.)
- Approved educational apps
- Tools suitable for minors (image processing, calculator, measurement etc.)
- User-defined by parents
Full draft available in Chinese: http://www.cac.gov.cn/2023-08/02/c_1692541991073784.htm
I saw a similar article posted on Reddit the other day and it was like twilight zone in the comments where almost everyone was saying that all parents should do this with their kids. I think it was centered around young children though. Still I think is shows that it’s almost unanimously agreed children should be safe guarded from the internet. lol.
Meanwhile is the west we have games made specifically to prey upon children and trick them into spending thousands from their parents credit cards and don’t get me started on the cesspool that is gaming streamers.
One of the main complaints I’ve heard from kids in my area around 10 years and up is that banning them from the internet is essentially isolating them. Most families do not have home phones any longer, so their only way to communicate is often via online apps.
I think setting reasonable limits is important, but it may also be necessary to make sure children still have ways to socialize with other children regularly outside of school. Granted, I know nothing of how this works in China and maybe it’s a non-issue there.
I wonder if there will be an exception made for texting or calling, since the article mentions Internet addiction specifically and parents probably want their children to be able to contact them 24/7
For emergency calling and contacting parents, yes.
As far as I know they can restrict access to certain types of internet services, like games, social media, etc, so it’s pretty far from whole-internet blocking. It would be pretty reasonable to keep a messaging and calling app open, limited to friends and family of course, along with online school resources and educational content, as well as general things that have artistic or literary value and don’t pose a risk of addiction.
Makes sense, a limit as strict as 8 minutes for the youngest kids seriously inhibits basic communication, so really this either has to iterated on or a great deal of parents will just opt out so it has no effect.
8 min
It’s actually 40 minutes for minors under 8, not sure where the original person got 8 from.
40 minutes is completely workable!
Also, this is minors under EIGHT. You can barely wipe your ass at eight. 40 mins a day of unrestricted internet access is extremely generous at that age, maybe even too generous. I’d argue that they shouldn’t even have direct access to the internet. When I was eight I watched what my parents let me watch, and if I complained, I got banned from the TV and computer for a month.
I was talking to someone the other day about how hard it would be to raise kids with technology. Do you take the slot machine out of their pockets until they’re some arbitrary age? Will the good that does outweigh the harm of not being as socially connected as their peers?
The return of dumbphones might be a solution, but smartphones do so much (think GPS) and are required for so much that this has its own problems.
I am childfree but a lot of my close friends have kids now, and this is a huge topic of conversation for all of them. Working out how much time they spend on devices, what they do on the devices, etc. They don’t want to segregate their kids from learning important technologies at a young age, but neither do they want their kids to be online 24/7. I honestly don’t envy the situation.
I think these restrictions are honestly a pretty good baseline guideline.
Here’s the full draft in Chinese: http://www.cac.gov.cn/2023-08/02/c_1692541991073784.htm. It’s actual 40 minutes for “Under 8” and not 8 minutes. Here’s my own summary:
The proposed guidelines do not just affect smartphones, but all mobile smart devices for kids.
The proposed 5 age groups are:
- Under 3
- 3 to under 8
- 8 to under 12
- 12 to under 16
- 16 to under 18
Default time limits are (parents can exempt all time limits):
- under 8: 40 minutes
- 8 to under 16: 1 hour
- 16 to under 18: 2 hours
- Reminder to rest every 30 minutes
- No service to be provided to minors from 10PM to 6AM the next day
Apps not subject to time limits:
- emergency-related (safety, emergency calling etc.)
- approved educational apps
- tools suitable for minors (image processing, calculator, measurement etc.)
- User-defined by parents
Content providers are also required to provide age-based service under “minor mode”. You can find the recommendations for different age groups under the heading “五、移动互联网应用程序未成年人模式要求（一）基本要求”, it’s too long for me to translate.
There’s more information in the full draft, this proposed guidelines is basically a mix of parental controls and NSFM (NSFW but for minors, not safe for minors) requirements for content providers.
Thanks! I’ve updated the original post with some of your info
This is a great policy. This forces Chinese internet companies to provide ways to prevent youth digital addiction, unlike in the West where anything goes.
The parent opt-out policy is a good thing. Some youth may be under special circumstances (esports gamer, mobile developer, etc.).
I didn’t know that the youth gaming policy was also opt-out. Everyone in the west omitted that said that it was mandatory, and that seemed pretty over the top. Since both are opt out, this is a very reasonable policy.
yeah this all seems pretty reasonable. its more or less what my parents did for me, but i was before the advent of ipad kids. not every parent can work at ensuring kids spend a limited time on devices, especially when they’re working against adults whose full time jobs it is to cause addictive use.
This forces Chinese internet companies to provide ways to prevent youth digital addiction, unlike in the West where anything goes.
This is a huge one. If the internet wasn’t capitalist and designed to draw kids in and not let them go, a restriction like this would not be needed. We don’t go around restricting kids playing, for example, soccer, because it’s extremely rare that they will get addicted to soccer to the point of jeopardizing their development. Both soccer and the internet are entertainment and recreation, there is no real fundamental difference between them. BUT, in our current capitalistic society, one of those was crafted by marketing professionals and literal psychologists to get kids hooked and keep coming back no matter what. If that wasn’t the case and sites were made to just be fun and entertaining (and safe) without the dark patterns and addictive designs, then the internet is just another form of recreation like soccer, and we don’t need to enforce how much kids use it anymore. In a world like that I imagine kids would also naturally use the internet less, because, again, it would be just another form of recreation out of the many others they have access to, and not something designed occupy every part of their mind.
You don’t like these restrictions? I know I’m not a huge fan purely in principle, then we need to clean up and de-capitalize the internet so it’s safe for kids’ mental development to access whenever they want. Until then, I think limits like this is needed and I support them.
I didn’t know that the youth gaming policy was also opt-out. Everyone in the west omitted that said that it was mandatory, and that seemed pretty over the top. Since both are opt out, this is a very reasonable policy.
IMO it should be. Internet gaming, as in the esports and micro transactions kind, should be restricted to mid or late teens at best because it really does prime your brain for things like gambling. Games that do not have such tendencies, like story or strategy based games that run locally and are not pay to win or have dark patterns, basically like an interactive movie that you play a character in and is actually intended to have artistic or literary value, should be treated differently as they’re more like a futuristic story book than something like Fortnite, but very few modern “popular with the kids” games fall onto that category so it’s kind of moot.
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if it’s the default and recommended by the government, a lot of parents are going to go along with it anyway without being coerced
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Sure, but the parents need to be able to handle that based on their local conditions. Not everyone is going to agree with the system (e.g. maybe they just want a slightly higher limit for their child) and the proposal suggests an opt-out feature to prevent unnecessary discontent
What if the kid needs it for homework? Lots of stuff is moving online, whether we like it or not.
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From what it sounds like, the blocks are just on devices of the children in similar ways that parental controls more or less already work. So I would imagine that the parents could have ways to grant access in similar ways that can be done on Windows. A request to be allowed to use something gets sent to be approved by the parent, and give a window of time to use it. The night-time default setting of 10PM to 6AM isn’t does make sense if trying to push for kids to sleep (though I have always had issues getting to sleep before midnight and would be annoyed not being able to kill time online). Also seems that they are asking for the input of the people currently. So things like homework should very much be something that gets brought up by those that submit concerns/ideas to the officials.
I am not a fan of super controlled restrictions on accessing the internet. But I also think that while more things are being put online, there is a big difference between knowing how to use something and it being just always demanding your attention. We are seeing that hyper use of social media is causing so many to further feel outcast and depressed. Especially since so much of the stuff posted is fake shit to make other people think that the person posting stuff is living such a “good/cool/wild/elite/etc life.” Just attention seeking stuff and placing the vibes or super surface level shit above real things/knowledge.
The internet has become so much about consumerism and pushing for making us have shorter and shorter attention spans. Ads plastered everywhere and the rapid forcing of rapid fire AI generated content masking itself as humans. Rumors and click-bait shit are used to encourage reactionary sharing and acting without having ever read/watched the piece. So many of these things are already causing adults of all ages to believe nonsense. So many young folks I interact with can use the hell out of their phones and apps. But they don’t actually know how to use actual computers or even know where their files are. Just assuming that the devices will automatically do everything for them. Even real computers are being dumbed down to just copy phones/tablets and ads keep invading into the OSes themselves. Always online is really becoming a much larger issue than just parental controls. But this rant has gone on longer than I ever meant for it to. Just so much capitalist/consumerist shit being placed before any actual learning or putting people before profits.
I’m not a huge fan of enforced time restrictions either, kids or otherwise. In an ideal world, society would be set up such that kids can play however they want with the resources they have access to, without harming their development, and limits like these would not be needed. HOWEVER, this is not an ideal world. Companies are doing everything they can to capture your kids’ attentions and not let them go, siphoning them in with dark patterns created by psychologists that children do not stand a chance at defending themselves against. They can easily ruin their future through addiction to internet services that’s been expertly crafted to get them addicted, and it’s the fault of capitalism, which sadly does also exist in China. Under these conditions, while an enforced time limit is far from ideal and will be hard on both the parent and child, it is currently the best way to protect children from capitalism IMO. If we want to see these restrictions become obsolete and no longer imposed, we need to crack down on the actual causes of these things, which is the internet services themselves and make sure they operate ethically (non-capitalistically) before we can chance giving children unlimited access to them.
Think it’d be pretty easy to tell a kid you can’t, or just not inform them that there is an opt-out process in the first place, but I could get it if some people object to the lying by omission
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If the parent gives in to a kid just because they raised a fuss about it, they have more issues than just the amount of time that child is spending online. 0
The government can’t single-handedly raise your child for you (short of some more extreme circumstances). They can help, they can give guidelines like these, but ultimately you are responsible.
I think having these restrictions will help a lot parents, especially new parents, have a good baseline to work with. If your kid is doing wonderfully in school, afterschool activities and wants some extra time online, maybe you can scale up their online free time. Grades start to suffer? Scale it back down. Your high school kid has a passion for app programming? Maybe you uncap their online time because it isn’t just about online gaming for them.
One size doesn’t fit all, and I think it’s a good middle ground.
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not every kid is the same and i think this is recognition of that fact. promoting health while still giving trust to families is a good thing in my opinion. they can always revise these rules if it has unforeseen issues.
I think the ideal polilcy both recognizes the possible benefits from the increased access to information that comes with the internet, and the great risks. An elephant in the room, with a particular significance to those who experienced it first (not to say that our parents didnt have similar or worse in non digital form) is the fact that the normalization of internet access also normalized access to hardcore pornography amongst teenagers and even some kids.
Also, not sure of they already have this already, but children under like 15 or so should not be allowed to post or interact online without direct parent supervision. There is way too much risk of grooming, or hell, even just posting something dumb as kids are, having it blow up, and deeply regretting it in your adulthood.
I agree kids should be sheltered to an extent, but this can very easily lead to a reactionary parent blocking all access to all trans, evolution, or even mildly left-wing related things online. Also, if that were the rule I and a few other of us wouldn’t be here.
Fair enough as well. Good points!
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I bet western media will just magically forget to mention that the parents have the final control over the system when they cover the story.
My kneejerk reaction would be that too many parents would just instantly opt-out for it to be effective, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that a lot of people might just keep the default parameters. If I suddenly became a parent and didn’t have a good concept of what an appropriate amount of time would be, I might be inclined to keep the baseline restrictions. Even if they don’t, the government limitation could be good guidelines for them to base what they decide would work.
Seems like a good first step, 2 hours seems like plenty of time for high school students, at least during the week. I wouldn’t necessarily mind lighter restrictions on weekends, but that would probably fall under the purview of parental discretion. No live-streaming for under-16 seems like a no-brainer that should be adopted everywhere honestly.
Good points. It’s more effort to opt out. And many parents will surely appreciate the fact they can tap their watch and say, ‘I don’t make the rules’. It can be hard for parents to limit things like this ‘because their friends are online’, etc. So this rule will make it easier for parents to be united against tech-creep.
Parents will be allowed to opt out of the time limits for their youngsters.
IMO, most parents will in that case. There needs to be more State (or more reasonably, their qualified and trained teachers) oversight if this is to work. Not as in don’t let parents opt out at all, but more like “You want your kid to opt out? Great, tell us why and we’ll assess the situation and either approve or deny your opt out request.” Or, again more reasonably, “You want your kid to opt out? Great, let’s arrange a parent teacher meeting and we can all talk about it and everyone, including the child, gets to voice their opinion, and we’ll come to a solution we can all accept.”
The notion that kids belong to their parents and so that they should have the final say is outdated. Kids belong to themselves first and foremost, so their future must be protected, and secondly to society because that’s where they’ll live once they grow up. If the parents are dumb at parenting in a way that jepordizes the child’s future, then they need to be corrected for the sake of the child. I’m not saying to prevent the parents from raising their kids or to completely overrule the parents or punish them or anything like that, but I’m saying that teachers and other professionals should also weigh in, work with both the parents and child, and reprimand the parents if they’re making a really stupid decision. It takes a village.
i would argue this is less of an indication that kids belong to their parents, and more a result of realistic expectations. from what I can tell, this system as-is can run in place with little oversight. The request pipeline idea would require a whole other fully-staffed effort with unknown benefits, new policies, and runs the risk of introducing bias or inconsistent application.
Good points there!
There’s more power than you think in making what you want be the default. Imagine there’s a restaurant where you automatically get healthy food but could call it back and get junk food in a minute. Most people are going to keep the healthy food unless they’re a really picky child. Now imagine now where McDonald’s is the default and it’s the easiest food to get everywhere, but you could work harder and make healthy food, but most won’t. completely different outcome.
Actually, that’s a really good point. Come to think of it I may have been doubting parents too much.
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are these per day? per week?
A day, I’d have thought.
When’s CCP Joe gonna force this tyrannical measure on our poor little Amerikkkan children? (Soon inshallah 🙏)
