The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has proposed a new measure that would drastically change the routine of minors of the Asian giant. The body intends to limit the use of smartphones for people under 18 years of age, with a clear objective in mind: to control the use of the Internet among the little ones.
This bill seeks to create a “minor mode” on smartphones that would limit children’s access to the Internet. It is not the first measure that China would take in this area. The country has already passed several laws to control and limit Internet access among its citizens in recent times: two years ago it prohibited children under 16 from playing streaming video games; at the same time it decreed that children under 14 years of age could only use TikTok 40 minutes a day; and months later it expanded the restriction on the use of video games for minors, leaving it at only 3 hours a week.
These measures by the Chinese government are not convincing outside its borders. China has faced a difficult title from the international community. Last year, Freedom House named it the “worst country in the world for digital freedom” for the eighth consecutive year, a title that has been reconfirmed following the latest measure.
This new measure would try to prohibit the use of smartphones by children between 10 pm and 6 am. Likewise, screen time would be limited depending on age: those under 8 years of age would have 40 minutes of screen time a day, those between 8 and 16 years of age would have one hour and adolescents would enjoy two hours.
The rule has caused a bump in the price of the country’s technology companies, whose shares have fallen after the proposal: Alibaba fell 5%, NetEase 3% and Baidu 4% on the stock market.
China has already faced Internet consumption by its population on several occasions. Two years ago, the CCP passed the world’s strictest limits on video games for minors. The objective? Stop the ‘Internet addiction’ suffered by the country. This caused video game sales in China to drop for the first time in history.
