China restricted young people from video games

Sydney: In late November, Australia’s federal parliament passed landmark legislation banning under-16s from accessing social media.

Details remain vague: we don’t have a complete list of which platforms will fall under the legislation, or how the ban will look in practice. However, the government has signalled that trials of age assurance technologies will be central to its enforcement approach.

Video games and online game platforms are not currently included in Australia’s ban of social media. But we can anticipate how enforcing an online ban might (not) work by looking at China’s large-scale use of age verification technologies to restrict young people’s video game consumption.

In China, strict regulations limit children under 18 to just one hour of online gaming on specified days. This approach highlights significant challenges in scaling and enforcing such rules. ‘Spiritual opium’: video games in China China is home to a large video game industry. Its tech giants, like Tencent, are increasingly shaping the global gaming landscape. However, the question of young people’s consumption of video games is a much thornier issue in China. The country has a deep cultural and social history of associating video games with addiction and harm, often referring to them as “spiritual opium”. This narrative frames gaming as a potential threat to the physical, mental and social wellbeing of young people.

For many Chinese parents, this perception shapes how they view their children’s play. They often see video games as a disruptive force that undermines academic success and social development. Parental anxiety like this has paved the way for China to implement strict regulations on children’s online gaming. This approach has received widespread parental support.

In 2019, China introduced a law to limit gaming for under 18-year-olds to 90 minutes per day on weekdays and three hours on weekends.