School has just resumed in China and with it comes new bans on videogame play by young people. According to new rules from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), people under 18 are no longer permitted to play online games during the week and are limited to one hour each day, from 8 to 9pm, on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. From CNN:
The move represents a huge tightening of earlier limits set by the agency in 2019, which had restricted play to 90 minutes on weekdays and three hours on weekends for children[…]
At a news conference Monday, a spokesperson for the NPPA said that the strict new curbs were in response to complaints from parents.
"Many parents said that teenagers' addiction to online games seriously affected their studies, and physical and mental health, leading to a series of social problems, making many parents suffer," said the unidentified representative, according to a report by Xinhua.
In recent years, the Chinese government implemented a registration system which required people who played computer games to do so under their real names, allowing companies to check up on them.
This week, it reiterated that policy, with the NPPA noting that "online game enterprises shall not provide game services in any form … to users who have not registered or logged in with their real names."
image (cropped): Vadermonk (CC BY-SA 4.0)