The Diary Game 05/09/2021 - China Prohibits Children From Playing Online For More Than 3 Hours a Week.

I am amused by the news that the Chinese authorities forbid children to play online for more than 3 hours a week. And not anyway, but more precisely they are allowed between 8 pm and 9 pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Welcome to the dictatorship, these are its advantages! The state tells you how long you are allowed to pee on your mobile phone or console. You play too much as a child, go to lessons, because then someone has to work!

The rule is extremely easy to apply in China. Are you a game maker and want to sell in our market? Then allow access to accounts under 18 only between 20 and 21. And as all games now require an account, and in China an account with a real name and other personal identification data, the problem is solved.

I know that this rule might be to the liking of many people here who think that young people are watching the phone too much, but these people forget that humanity has fought for decades for the freedom of children to play in whatever form they want. To be children.

Children worked hard even in the early 20th century. I read on Wikipedia that in Britain a 1856 law had banned a maximum limit of 12 hours / day, 60 hours per week, for children aged 9-16. In 1901, the limit was increased to 12 years. And they didn't pack boxes, but they also worked in factories and me. A century later, we grew up in a totally different world where, at the age of 10, you could still be a child, interested in ball, bicycle and Quake.

The matter is not actually resolved today. In poor countries, children work from an early age, for example in cobalt mines.

But what all the old people who say too many hours with their eyes on the computer forget is that playing this can lead to very good things. Of course, some of the children will just waste their time like this and will gain nothing from this. But some will want to know what's behind the game and learn more about hardware and software, do programming and, if they like, work in one of the highest paid fields now and in the future.

Moreover, it seems that one of the reasons why the US is far ahead of other countries in terms of the gaming industry, the Internet, start-ups, online services and the like is the early exposure of children to computers. Some are circulating tear-jerking messages about what a cool generation was playing improvised rifles and plastic pipes and bullets made of twisted paper in the shape of a cornet or slingshots of cut wire or balls made of plastic drums. At the same time, the Americans and the Japanese had IBM PC and Atari and Nintendo, and some of them went further and founded Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and many other companies.

Today, the gaming industry alone is valued at $ 150 billion annually. The general software… I do not know, but probably exceeds several trillion dollars.

So the Chinese state, in fact, is putting some obstacles in its own way in a future development. Not that I care too much about it, every bird on its tongue perishes, as they say, and the tongue can be Mandarin. But I thought that such measures would never be applied in any country, not as a state policy, because it is not in the interest of that state at all. Eventually, whoever wants to waste time will lose it anyway, with their eyes on the screen or something else.

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