Chinese regulators have put out regulations that would cap the amount of time that persons under the age of 18 can spend using their smartphones at two hours each day.
Beijing‘s ambition to assert more control over more aspects of the nation’s digital life is evident in the radical draft regulations proposed by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is becoming more and more powerful.
Companies like Tencent and ByteDance, who manage some of China’s most popular mobile apps, may be affected if the guidelines become law if they are adopted.
The draft guidelines for the CAC are part of a larger initiative by Chinese authorities to prevent and reduce app and smartphone addiction in people under the age of 18. In China, a law was passed in 2021 that prohibited minors under the age of 18 from spending more than three hours a week playing video games online.
Some of the largest internet companies in China have tried to anticipate future regulatory restrictions.
According to the proposed regulations, cellphones must include a “minor mode” that is readily accessible for users under the age of 18, either as a home screen icon or in the device’s system settings.
With the minor mode, parents may control what their children see online and internet service providers can display content tailored to the user’s age. Children under the age of three should watch songs and audio-focused entertainment, according to CAC. The age range for those who can access instructional and news content is 12 to 16.
The CAC issued a warning to online businesses not to offer services that encourage addiction or are harmful to children’s physical and mental health.
The CAC’s proposed guidelines categorize youngsters into various age groups and place various limitations on them according to their age.
No more than 40 minutes per day should be allowed for smartphone use by kids under the age of eight. Children who are eight years old or older but under the age of sixteen may use their phone for no more than one hour per day. A maximum of two hours can be spent using a phone by those between the ages of 16 and 17.
The proposed restrictions state that a handset should not offer any services to youngsters between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following day.
There are several exceptions to these times since regulated educational items and applications for emergency services are not constrained.
Any attempts to remove a device from minor mode must be verified by a parent.
China’s regulations are still being drafted and are available for public comment.
The draft law’s implementation and enforcement procedures as well as the potential effects on China’s digital titans are still up for debate.
For instance, it is not obvious who will be in charge of developing a minor mode—the device manufacturer, the operating system supplier, or both. In either scenario, Apple might be forced, for instance, to design something fresh for its iPhones in China.
Also must be addressed is how the CAC will oversee the minor mode software and these time restrictions.
Technology behemoths operating in China, including as hardware manufacturers like Apple and Xiaomi and software developers like Tencent and Baidu, will be keenly monitoring the legislation.
Tencent and NetEase, two of the largest online gaming companies in the world, claimed that users under the age of 18 only made up a small fraction of their total revenue when China began to restrict young people’s gaming time two years ago.
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