There is a war raging right now in China, and it's against online addiction. The latest recruits aren't doctors or bureaucrats, but parents.
Starting next month, a new "parental watch project" will go into effect that will require online gaming companies to have a web page and call center hotline for parents to monitor their children's gaming habits.
According to the People's Daily Online, internet game service providers will authorize parents to limit or ban their children from playing. This comes as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pegs the number of the country's teenage "internet addictions" at 33 million.
According to the Ministry of Public Security (via The Register), children shouldn't be playing online games for more than two hours a week or spend more than US1.50 on online gaming services.
"The kids can easily use a fake adult ID to get back into the game. They can just hide from their parents," Liu Kun, a 27-year-old gamer in Beijing, told China Daily.
This is just another measure in which the Chinese government is cracking down on online gaming. The country already has "internet boot camps". One clinic even uses shock therapy and even fatal beatings to ween kids off the internet.
Last summer, a group of teenagers escaped from a Chinese internet boot camp, only to find they didn't have enough money to cover the cab fare.
China to launch parental watch project to fight online games addiction [People's Daily Online] [image: Getty]