China’s Weekday Ban on Kids’ Videogame: Is it detrimental to society?
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, China Sets Weekday Ban on Kids’ Videogame Play. Should You Do That, Too?, tech columnist Julie Jargon, in response to China’s recent restrictions on video games, explains her own experience of implementing gaming limits on her children in the United States. By citing expert testimony and recent studies, Jargon asserts the importance of exerting more control over childrens’ screen time to “protect young people’s mental and physical health” and to “ensure they aren’t distracted from school and family responsibilities”.
As China strengthened its measures to cut down on childrens’ screentime, Jargon, a mother of three, considered managing her kids’ screentime too. She brings into light research from Rutgers University that found that children with high screen time had “worse academic performance” and “lacked concentration in class”. These findings led Jargon to “rethink how she managed her kid’s game time at home”, prompting her to devise a schedule for her kids. Heeding expert Michael Rich’s advice about letting kids do what they want after gaming, Jargon came up with a schedule where her kids’ gaming time would be followed by activities such as going on walks or hikes or playing at the park. This way, her kids would be able to “sleep enough, get their homework done, have face-to-face time with friends and family, and get outside”, all while still getting more videogame time than kids in China.
As a once-avid gamer, I felt truly sorry for my gamer counterparts in China who have no choice but to comply with the gaming restrictions they are faced with. To prohibit kids from gaming on weekdays and allow merely an hour on Fridays to Sundays is to disregard those who make a living off gaming. Kids in more poor sectors of the country may heavily rely on gaming and streaming for a living, making the rule detrimental to their lifestyle and income. There must also have been kids in China who were previously able to fit gaming into their day all while being able to complete their homework on time and engage in healthy activities, and the new rule would take away such opportunities from those who weren’t negatively impacted by it. If a similar rule were to be implemented in Singapore, an overwhelming group of teenagers including myself would find the government taking their hobby away from them, ridding them of the joys they share with their fellow gamers. On the other hand, severely limiting gaming time could aid studying to those who spend large portions of their day gaming, which points to a possible long-term benefit of China’s harsh restriction. Additionally, thinking into the future, prohibiting gaming may produce a stronger economy, but one may ask what good that may be if a large portion of the population is not happy. Objectively speaking, suppressing the right of kids to play games may not even give rise to many better-performing students, as research only indicates that those who are willingly gaming less are performing better in school. It is entirely possible that China’s young population may become rebellious and crave their games even more. Until we find out what results from China’s controversial gaming restriction, we can only speculate as such a daring action by the government on a scale as huge as this has not been undertaken before.