If there is one lesson to be learned from the whole saga surrounding the use of TikTok in Canada, it is that Western governments and China have diametrically opposed digital management policies. And if the Western approach is good, perhaps some Chinese measures deserve to be studied more closely.
One of these measures is the imposition of a limit on the use by minors of social networks and video games. On this, China is extremely severe. Chinese under 18 cannot exceed three hours of online video gaming per week. They can only do this for one hour a day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The Chinese government has thus tightened a constraint which prevented young people from accessing online video games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. There, it is only allowed between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The framework is strict, but it does not block everything. Young people can play all the video games they want for as long as they want, as long as they are not connected to the Internet.
Over the next few weeks, a similar restriction will be imposed on the TikTok network by the company that owns it, ByteDance. The Chinese group announced last week that it would limit the time spent on its social network to 60 minutes daily by its users who are under the age of 18.
It’s a relatively soft restriction: after the 60 minutes are exhausted, young users will have to enter an access code to continue watching videos. This additional access time will still be limited to 30 minutes in the case of users under the age of 13. For them, the access code will have to be obtained from their parents.
“The opium of the (young) people”
TikTok’s chief security officer, Cormac Keenan, wrote on the company’s blog that the company understands that parents have difficulty limiting the time their children spend on the app. Many parents: nearly half of TikTok subscribers are under 25, and a quarter are 18 or younger.
It is undoubtedly a huge coincidence: this new function was announced a few days before the boss of TikTok appeared in person before the American Congress, alongside his counterparts from other social networks popular with young people, to present this which is done to protect the health of minors.
American elected officials are concerned about the impact of social networks and video games on the mental and physical health of children and adolescents: decreased vision, lack of physical activity, concentration problems, etc.
Ironically, these concerns coincide with those of the Chinese government. The latter compares online video games to “mental opium” for young players addicted to their console or their mobile. “The opium of the people” is an expression used by followers of Marxist ideology to talk about religion.
More recently, the phrase has been taken up to criticize the alienating effect television has on the public. In 2023, it seems that the new addiction is on the Internet: video games, social networks, etc.
Beyond TikTok
In Quebec, the same concerns shared by Beijing and Washington are behind a class action brought against Epic Games. Parents find that Fortnite, its massively multiplayer online game, is very addictive among young people. To illustrate the situation, they do not cite opium. They talk more about cocaine.
In late February, the Quebec Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by Epic Games and allowed the class action to proceed. The American publisher, which has offices in Montreal, has the financial means and perhaps the intention to appeal another time, before the Supreme Court this time. Otherwise, the prosecution will proceed.
Unsurprisingly, the mechanisms used to make Fortnite more attractive to video game enthusiasts are similar to those used by TikTok to attract its own users: the almost instantaneous gratification produced by short immersion sessions makes you want to come back to them more and more often.
This gratification, however, is not entirely satisfactory. It is calculated to reinforce the need to consume more of the content offered. In the case of Fortnite, there is a financial aspect: players are encouraged to spend to improve their gaming experience. And they can spend big.
Here is another astonishing coincidence: neither TikTok nor Fortnite are only accessible from the Chinese Internet. Beijing does not skimp and expels from its highly controlled network anything that the central government considers to be a waste of time or a bad influence on its children.
Obviously, China has acted in an extreme way. But Western governments and the public share his fears about the detrimental effect on the health of the youngest Internet users of social networks and video games.
Their reaction for the moment is to let the court and ad hoc committees decide. But perhaps a stricter framework for the digital sector would avoid future slippages without limiting its growth.