Just before this year's national college entrance exam, or the gaokao, on June 7-8, a letter from a despairing mother of student made a big splash on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like microblogging platform. The mother described how her son, who used to be an outstanding learner, failed the exam due to his addiction to online games and fell into a state of depression.

The mother hoped this case could be a warning for other juveniles and also called on lawmakers to legislate a law to regulate the development of Internet game companies so as to prevent young people from becoming addicted to the Internet.

The letter resonated with many Chinese parents. In recent years, a wave of violent, pornographic, vulgar and fake information has hit cyberspace, especially in the fields of online games, short videos, social media and live streaming, which has impacted negatively on the youth.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the total number of Internet users in China reached 772 million by the end of 2017; around 23 percent of them were aged under 19. The age of first time access to the Internet dropped from 15 to 10.

Experts believe that the rapid development of the Internet has an important positive effect on the majority of young children in learning, leisure, entertainment and social interaction. However, children trust strangers easily and can be influenced by online information. They have difficulties in distinguishing true from false messages and are unaware of how to protect themselves. In addition, many of them indulge in online games, which heavily undermines their physical and mental health.

"I know some of my classmates play online games and often discuss the games in school. I know it is not good for their study," said a primary school student who refused to give his name. He added that he do not have chance to play online games because his parents do not allow him to.

Enterprises' efforts 

Honor of Kings, a mobile game developed by Chinese Internet conglomerate Tencent, has been a huge hit in the country since 2015. The number of its users in China has reached 200 million, and 54 percent are aged under 20. However, its prevalence has been wrapped in controversy because a large number of teenagers are addicted to the game. For example, in early June 2017, a single mother in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province discovered her triplet sons had run up a bill of over 18,000 yuan ($2,700) on her credit card through in-app purchases while playing the game. A 17-year-old gamer in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong Province was diagnosed with cerebral infarction in April 2017 after playing the online game Honor of Kings for 40 hours nonstop.

These are just two of the many such cases related to mobile Internet games that have been doing the rounds online. Facing criticism over the growing number of young Chinese players hooked on the Honor of Kings, Tencent introduced new rules limiting users under 12 to an hour of play time each day starting July 2017. Those aged between 12 and 18 will be forced to log out after two hours per day. Any young player who attempts to play for a longer period will be logged off automatically and cannot log on again that day.

"Compared with parents and governments, Internet companies should play a major role in preventing children from getting addicted to the Internet because they can use the digital technology to interfere," said Zhang Jiaji, Member of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

To enforce the ban, the company also tightened up its real-name registration system to prevent young players faking identities.

In February 2017, Tencent rolled out a monitoring platform in the game Honor of Kings to help parents supervise their children's game accounts. Parents can use this platform to check their children's consumption records and records of playing games anytime, anywhere. In addition, the platform also allows parents to stop their children playing the game by simply pressing a button on their own cellphones. This platform is applied to children under 18.

However, tough control over mobile online games is just an expedient measure and cannot eradicate the root problem. A lack of parental companionship is the root cause of children's game addiction, according to Sun Hongyan, Director of the Institute of Juvenile Studies at the China Youth & Children Research Center. He suggested that parents should spend more time with their children to foster family unity and trust instead of having children turn to gaming alternatives because of unhappiness at home.

Legal protection

The Chinese Government is also taking measures to protect juveniles from game addiction. In January 2017, the State Council released a full report and draft regulations to solicit public opinions on how to tackle youth Internet addiction. On May 11, the CPPCC National Committee invited experts, scholars and enterprise representatives to discuss the legislation of the Regulations on the Protection of the Minors in the Cyber Space in Beijing.

Wang Feng, Member of the CPPCC National Committee and the head of the youth protection department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, believes that content supervision should be emphasized in the regulations. Enterprises should supervise the information that is inappropriate for minors to access, which is actually described in the existing Criminal Law and Cyber Security Law. Families and schools should also play a leading role in ensuring that children do not overstep the boundaries online, according to Jiang Liping, Member of the CPPCC National Committee.

"At present, some parents lack the scientific and effective methods to guide minors in the right approach on the Internet; some parents neglect to supervise and leave the 'Internet addicts' in the wrong hands, and some parents themselves lack sufficient knowledge and understanding of the Internet," said Jiang, adding that parents are required to make themselves aware of the pitfalls of the Internet to help their children nip any Internet addiction in the bud.

Li Youyi, Principal of No.12 Middle School in Beijing, proposed in the meeting that primary and secondary schools should establish an early-stage security warning network and reporting system for teenagers. "All kinds of security issues discovered in the minor's cyber life, such as Internet addiction, cyberbullying, online pornography, cyber violence, cyber fraud and cyber reaction should be reported to the education administrative department so that they can analyze and solve these problems in time," said Li.

(Comments to liuting@chinafrica.cn)