Spending too much time on our phones is not a good thing, especially for children who might be more impressionable at a younger age. Now phone makers have come up with ways to help parents manage screen time, although it seems that kids are pretty smart when it comes to finding ways around it.
However over in China, Tencent seems to be taking a slightly more hardcore approach to managing screen time for kids. A report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the company plans to verify the identities and age of players playing their games, and if they’re not adults, then their screen time will be limited.
For example by checking IDs and if it is discovered that the player is aged 12 and below, they are only allowed one hour of gaming between 8AM and 9PM. If they are aged 13 to 18, then they get two hours of gaming. So far the system has already been put into effect for Tencent’s Honor of Kings, and will be expanded to cover at least 10 titles by the end of the year, with every game expected to have some kind of checking measure in 2019.
While we get where Tencent is coming from, there is also the issue of privacy since this actually checks against the ID of the user, which in some cases involves minors, but if Tencent is hoping to avoid the wrath of the Chinese government, they have no choice but to comply.