China versus US: Who controls how long kids can play video games?

While China holds game publishers responsible, parents are left to their own discretion in the West

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China versus US: Who controls how long kids can play video games?

Josh Ye

Published: 7:05pm, 28 Feb 2019Updated: 8:58am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Most parents want to ensure their children aren't being harmed by playing video games. But while American parents have a great deal of freedom to decide how they want to monitor their kids' gaming behavior, in China those choices are often made by companies pressured by the government.

Chinese gaming giant Tencent already imposes various controls on young players’ game time. But this week, it’s testing a new feature: A monitoring system that sends teachers daily updates of how long their students played and how much money they spent.

A teacher can see the game time of all students who accepted an invitation to join the monitoring scheme. (Picture: Tencent)

This adds to Tencent's existing mandatory restrictions on underage users. It limits game time for under-12s to just an hour a day, and players between 12 and 18 to two hours. There’s also a night-time curfew between 9pm and 8am.

But that's not all. After parents found out their children were using fake accounts or going to a smartphone cafe to play games, Tencent introduced another gatekeeping measure: It crosschecks the name and national ID of gamers against police records. To make sure that kids don’t impersonate adults, Tencent is also considering implementing mandatory facial recognition checks when gamers log in.

Tencent, China’s social and entertainment giant

These binding controls stand in stark contrast to measures implemented in the West. Most console gaming platforms come with parental-control features, but it’s ultimately up to the parents to decide if they want to turn them on.