China Announces Two Hour Daily Limit on Smartphone Use of Children, Tech Shares Down

The Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) said that it wants companies making smart devices to introduce minor mode programs so that users under the age of 18 cannot access the Internet on mobile devices from 10 pm to 6 am. Along with this, these companies will also have to set a deadline. In China, users aged 16 to 18 years will be allowed to spend two hours a day on mobile, for users aged eight to 16, this limit will be one hour and for children below eight years of age, this limit will be only eight minutes. However, at the same time CAC has said that service providers should allow parents to remove this time limit for their children. Feedback has been sought from people regarding this till September 2.

Due to this decision of CAC, there has been a huge fall in the shares of Chinese tech companies. Shares of Tencent Holdings, which operates social networking app WeChat, fell 2.99 percent. Apart from this, shares of Bilibili and Kuaishou have declined by 6.98 percent and 3.53 percent respectively. Regarding this, Xia Hailong, lawyer of law firm Shanghai Shenlun, said that the new rules will be a headache for internet companies. He said, “There will be additional costs to implement the new regulatory requirements. The risk of violating these rules is also high. I believe that many Internet companies may consider preventing minors from using their devices. ”

Authorities are concerned about the increasing problems of myopia and Internet addiction among China’s youth in the past few years. The Chinese government banned video game players under the age of 18 about two years ago. This caused huge losses to big gaming companies like Tencent. Video sharing platforms such as Bilibili, Kuaishou and ByteDance have for the past few years offered separate kid-friendly modes that restrict users’ access to content and length of use.