By Shashidhar K.J.
Beijing has enacted new laws to curb video game addiction amongst minors in China and now gamers under the age of 18 will be banned from playing games from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. Gamers will also be restricted to only 90 minutes on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays. The Chinese government also enacted rules to limit spending to 200 yuan a month. Similar laws have been enacted to protect minors in countries like South Korea and Japan, where users are logged out of online games at particular hours or given warnings.
Video games, as a medium, have always been under the scrutiny of governments and politicians for the perceived ills that they encourage. In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) classified gaming addiction as a mental health disorder with an emphasis on what exposure to video games might do to young minds. First person shooter (FPS) and shooter games have been made scapegoats following school shootouts for allegedly corrupting and desensitising children to virtual acts of graphic violence in the US—rather than enacting gun law reforms. Video games were hauled up during their infancy in the early 1990s, when US senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl pulled up the industry in congressional hearings for “realistic depictions of graphic violence” and exposing youngsters to them.
Politicians often raise concerns on the corrupting influence of video games. But in India, following the Galwan attack, outrage against gaming took a nationalistic flavour with the Indian government banning PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile (PUBG) along with several other Chinese apps as they posed a threat to national security—it is a wholly another matter that PUBG is developed by a South Korean video game company, Bluehole, and is only distributed by Chinese game publisher Tencent in India.
Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced children indoors and to spend more screen time with video games. Worried parents wish something could be done about the excessive screen time and violent video games. Regulators and politicians may be tempted to follow in China’s footsteps and enact similar bans, but, perhaps, it is wiser to hit pause […]
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