Cooperation needed to curb game addiction

[Photo: from VCG]

Experts and tech engineers say systems designed to curb Chinese young people's obsession with online gaming require consensus between children and their parents to be effective.

A report released at the Guangdong Youth Cybersecurity Forum couple of months ago said, a government survey of more than 6,200 families in Guangdong province found 23 percent of children aged 3 to 6 spend at least 30 minutes online every day.

More than 60 percent of 7-year-olds have downloaded games to their smartphones or tablets. At the age of 12, about 88 percent of children use QQ messenger and 70 percent use WeChat.

"Children use the internet for similar reasons as adults, such as learning, shopping and social interaction," said Su Wenying, a child protection officer with the China Office at the United Nations Children's Fund.

However, she added that there are legitimate concerns that children's development may be affected if they spend too much time online.

In December 2006, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League published a report that said more than 2 million Chinese children and teenagers were addicted to the internet and online gaming. "It is a severe social problem that could threaten the nation's future," it said.

A year later, authorities asked Chinese game developers to add the first version of an anti-addiction system to their games, said Wang Xi, a senior software engineer for an IT firm in Beijing.

In general, he said, anti-addiction systems can be broadly divided into two categories: hard and soft. Hard systems force players offline or stop them from logging in during a certain period, such as the online gaming curfew in South Korea that stops teenage players from logging in between midnight and 6 am, Wang said.

Soft systems do not restrict access, but discourage players from gaming for long periods of time by diminishing loot drops or progression, he added.

"Both of these systems are inherently flawed because children can easily bypass them by registering using adult IDs, or spending extra time or money to get their favorite item or character faster," he said. 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(News source: China Daily)