China Proposes Limiting Children’s Smartphone Usage to Two Hours Daily
China is considering implementing stricter regulations on the usage of smartphones by children. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has suggested a set of guidelines that would restrict individuals under the age of 18 to a maximum of two hours of phone usage per day. However, this limit would only apply to 16- and 17-year-olds. Additionally, children aged eight to 15 would be allowed one hour of phone usage daily, while those under the age of eight would be limited to 40 minutes.
The draft would also prohibit all use between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. The phone should have an easy-to-use mode that allows parents to limit what children can see and allow Internet service providers to show age-appropriate content. Children under the age of three can only listen to songs and other audio files, while children aged 12 and above can view educational and news material. There would be exceptions for regulated educational content and emergency services.
As with previous measures, the purpose of the proposal is to curb the addictive behavior of children. The Chinese government is concerned that long-term use of mobile devices, games and services can be harmful to children’s development. The country already limits young people to three hours of online video game time per week, and after that only on weekends and holidays.
The draft is still open to public consultation and approval cannot be guaranteed. There are also questions about implementation. CNBC notes that it’s not clear whether hardware manufacturers or operating system developers are responsible for enabling child mode. Even if Apple would have to change the iPhone’s parental controls in China despite this difference, getting an operating system developer involved might require Google to make changes, not just suppliers like Oppo or Xiaomi.
The rules would also have a significant impact on Chinese app developers such as ByteDance (responsible for TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin) and Tencent (maker of WeChat and many games). They may need to design apps and tailor content around these time limits.
