I saw a similar article earlier last month where Tencent, one of the larger Chinese video game companies, made a pledge that they would reduce play time for minors to an hour during weekdays and no more than two hours during vacations and holidays. They did this after Chinese state media made a comment about video games being “spiritual opium”.

The company also implemented measures such as facial recognition systems for certain games to prevent kids from using their parents’ IDs to buy in-game items or playing late at night.

Some of these attempts at reducing gaming seems like they may create problems of their own from my perspective. Privacy issues with facial recognition is one example. The strict rule setting also may have backfire effects, as kids don't learn to regulate their play and instead are forced to follow rules. When those rules may no longer apply (i.e., when they're older) they may end up not having developed the skills to regulate play, feel deprived of games (which increases the value of playing games) and ultimately cause more harm to an older population which has larger rippling harms (i.e., doing poorly in university may be more impactful than doing poorly in grade 2).

Wondering what other peoples thoughts are on what China is doing to address these issues?