China to limit teenagers’ smartphone use to a maximum of two hours a day in bid to prevent addiction to mobiles
- Chinese teens will be allowed a maximum of two hours a day on their phones
- Authorities are cracking down on screen time in a bid to boost teen health
- Users under 16 will get just one hour a day under the proposed reforms
China’s internet regulator will severely crack down on how much time teenagers are allowed to spend on their phones, limiting screen time to a maximum of just two hours a day.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it wanted to mandate so-called ‘minor mode programmes’ for smart devices that would ban users under 18 from accessing the internet between 10pm to 6am.
The CAC also said that the programmes would give users aged 16 to 18 two hours of screen time a day, while users under 16 would get just one hour per day.
Bizarrely, users under eight would get just eight minutes to use devices.
While the regulator said that the proposed reforms would give parents the option to opt out of the limits, this did little to soothe furious tech investors.
China’s internet regulator is set to implement the strict reforms soon, and investors in China’s tech sector are not happy about them (Stock)
The country has pushed through a string of tough measures designed to limit the amount of time young people spend online (Stock)
Stock in Chinese video-sharing app Bilibili plummeted swiftly after the regulator published its proposals (Stock)
Shares in Chinese tech firms listed in Hong Kong largely fell after the CAC published its proposals, which it said were open to public feedback until early September.
Bilibili and Kuaishou slid 6.98% and 3.53% respectively while Tencent Holdings, which operates the social network app WeChat, closed 2.99% lower.
Xia Hailong, a lawyer at the Shanghai Shenlun law firm, said the rules would be a headache for the internet companies.
‘A lot of effort and additional costs to properly implement these new regulatory requirements,’ he said.
The lawyer warned that Chinese internet companies may simply ban users under 18 from using their services altogether.
ByteDance, which owns and runs TikTok, already bans teens from spending more than 40 minutes a day on the app
‘The risk of non-compliance will also be very high. I believe that many internet companies may consider directly prohibiting minors from using their services,’ he said.
This isn’t the first time Chinese authorities have cracked down on how teenagers spend their free time.
Growing concern about increasing rates of nearsightedness and internet addiction among young people has led to major reforms across the tech industry in recent years.
In 2021, the authoritarian government tightened already strict rules regulating the amount of time kids under 18 could spend playing online games, banning them from playing on weeknights and giving them one hour between 8 and 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
The severe gaming limits for children under 18 were introduced in 2019.
On top of this, video-sharing platforms like Bilibili, Kuaishou and ByteDance have since 2019 offered ‘teenage modes’ that restrict the users’ access to content and the duration of use.
ByteDance’s TikTok-like app Douyin currently bars teenagers from using it for more than 40 minutes
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