Chinese authorities have chosen to address children and teenagers’ excessive smartphone use and internet addiction.
From September 2 to 6, persons under the age of 18 will have limited access to the internet and their devices, according to the planned legislation.
The authorities will introduce a tiered system to manage mobile usage time, with minors allowed 40 minutes each day and those aged 16 and 17 allowed up to two hours.
The new restrictions, proposed by China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC), are among the tightest in the world, aiming to limit and manage young people’s exposure to smartphones and the internet during specific times.
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 “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 numerous companies, including industry powerhouse Tencent.
And Wednesday’s ruling indicates that Beijing’s regulatory crackdown on homegrown tech behemoths will continue.
Following the CAC announcement, stocks of numerous top Chinese internet companies plummeted Wednesday, with Tencent’s Hong Kong-listed shares down 3.0 percent.
Meanwhile, Baidu, the web search, AI, and online services behemoth, saw its shares decline 3.75% during Hong Kong trade.
