Chinese Parents Able To Control, Ban Online Gaming

There is a war ragging right now in China, and it’s against online addiction. The latest recruits aren’t doctors or bureaucrats, but parents.

Starting next month, a new “parental watch project” will go into effect that will require online gaming companies to have a web page and call centre hotline for parents to monitor their children’s gaming habits.

According to the People’s Daily Online, internet game service providers will authorise parents to limit or ban their children from playing. This comes as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pegs the number of the country’s teenage “internet addictions” at 33 million.

According to the Ministry of Public Security (via The Register), children shouldn’t be playing online games for more than two hours a week or spend more than $US1.50 on online gaming services.

“The kids can easily use a fake adult ID to get back into the game. They can just hide from their parents,” Liu Kun, a 27-year-old gamer in Beijing, told China Daily.

This is just another measure in which the Chinese government is cracking down on online gaming. The country already has “internet boot camps”. One clinic even uses shock therapy and even fatal beatings to ween kids off the internet.

Last summer, a group of teenagers escaped from a Chinese internet boot camp, only to find they didn’t have enough money to cover the cab fare.

China to launch parental watch project to fight online games addiction [People’s Daily Online]


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


3 responses to “Chinese Parents Able To Control, Ban Online Gaming”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *