China’s New Children’s Internet Addiction Regulations

Under new restrictions introduced Wednesday to combat internet addiction, Chinese children and teenagers will be barred from accessing the internet at night and their smartphone use would be restricted.

Anyone under the age of 18 will be barred from using a mobile device to access the internet between 10 pm and 6 am under the restrictions, which are slated to go into effect on September 2 following a public consultation.

A tiered system for controlling smartphone usage time will also be implemented, ranging from 40 minutes per day for kids under the age of eight to two hours for 16- and 17-year-olds.

The new guidelines, proposed by China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC), are among the most rigorous in the world.

Parents, on the other hand, will be free to avoid them if they so desire.

The guidelines, according to the CAC, will improve the positive role of the internet, create a hospitable network environment, prevent and intervene in minors’ internet addiction problems, and guide minors to form good internet use habits.

“The measures would build on existing efforts to protect youngsters online, including by enriching age-appropriate content and decreasing the influence of bad information”, it said.

In recent years, Beijing authorities have pushed extensive control of the domestic IT sector, in part due to concerns about the risk that digital technology poses to young people.

In 2021, China banned children’s gaming time with the declared goal of combating addiction, and blocked new game approvals for nine months, crushing the financial lines of many companies including sector titan Tencent.

And Wednesday’s ruling indicates that Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on homegrown tech behemoth will continue.

Following the CAC’s announcement, stocks of numerous leading Chinese internet firms fell Wednesday, with Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares down 3.0 percent.

Meanwhile, Baidu, the web search, AI, and online services giant, saw its shares decline 3.75 percent during the Hong Kong trade.

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