China’s War Against Gaming Addiction

China is waging a war against an enemy no country has fought against or defeated! China is fighting a war against video game addiction.

Gaming addiction-myth or actual mental health condition?

Before we discredit China as being paranoid. We should keep in mind that gaming addiction is serious enough for the World Health Organization (WHO) to label it as a mental health condition.

The Chinese government has never been a big fan of video games. They repeatedly accused video games for motivating negative behaviour in young teens. It went so far as to establish a gaming regulator to control time spent online on video games. As well as develop an age-restriction system for video games.

Extreme steps?

Most of the major video game companies have agreed to comply with government regulations. But enforcement of the regulations and verifying the age of the players has proven to be easier said than done.

To combat this, Tencent, one of the world’s biggest video game companies, tackled the problem by reducing game time to one hour per day for users under 12 and 2 hours of online play for players between the ages of 12 and 18. Age verification will now be done through official state documents.

The government has decided to further increase the restrictions on online video games. As now Gamers under 18 will be banned from playing online between 22:00 and 08:00. They will also be restricted to 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours on weekends and holidays.

The new guidelines will apply universally to all online gaming platforms operating in china. So as to enforce the new rules across all online games and platforms.

Expected Results

It remains to be seen how well the cold-turkey approach of China will work in combating the epidemic of video-game addiction in China, assuming it exists in the first place.