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China says minor video game addiction "basically solved"

China says minor video game addiction "basically solved"

Video game addiction in China has apparently been solved.

That's according to the country's games trade body China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association - as reported by South China Morning Post – which says that 75 per cent of gamers below the age of 18 have reduced their play time to just three hours a week.

The report was co-authored by the Gaming Industry Research Institute of China and market research firm CNG and showed that 85 per cent of the "thousands" of parents who took part in the survey said that they were alright with their kids playing video games under supervision. 72 per cent of these parents said that games did not affect their children's studies.

Over 15 per cent of respondents said that their children topped up their online accounts in secret, though this is almost half the 28.6 per cent that said the same 12 months prior.

This comes in the wake of strict new regulations that limited how much time people below the age of 18 could spend playing video games. This is part of a moral panic in China, which claims that games are "spiritual opium".


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.