Not too long ago, the Chinese government announced further restrictions that they would be setting on gaming, where those aged under 18 will not be allowed to play games for more than 3 hours a week, and only on weekends at a certain time, meaning that even then they won’t get to choose when they want to game.
Now it looks like the government is further cracking down on the time kids spend on non-educational apps, such as Douyin, which is the China version of TikTok (also owned by ByteDance). According to these new restrictions, kids under 14 will not be allowed to spend more than 40 minutes a day using the app.
Those under 14 will be switched to a “youth mode” in the app and according to the restrictions, they will not be able to use the app between 10pm to 6am, meaning that the authorities do not want kids staying up into the middle of the night just using the app. All things considered, it is less restrictive compared to the new gaming regulations.
However, it should be noted that this probably won’t have too big of an effect on kids. This is because a report from the South China Morning Post revealed that 0.34% of users on Douyin are under the age of 12, while 4.18% are aged 13-19, so the vast majority are older users who do not have these restrictions applied to them.
Filed in . Read more about China and Tiktok. Source: bloomberg