"The 'pot' of children addicted to games should not just be thrown at parents. Parents, like children, do not understand the diversity and complexity of games, and they usually feel that all games are bad things. So how do they judge what games are good and should be played by children? Scholar Liu Mengfei said.
In Shanghai, China, in an Internet café, young people play video games online. Figure/IC photo
Wen 丨 Beijing News reporter Feng Yuxin
Editor 丨 Chen Xiaoshu
Proofreading 丨 Jia Ning
► This article 6094 words read 11 minutes
After half a year, Wen Jie still often remembered that because her daughter had charged the game with more than three thousand pieces without authorization, her family suddenly became a battlefield: her husband beat her daughter, and her daughter went on hunger strike. At that moment, she felt as if she had "lost her daughter." Since then, the daughter has also become "so cold and strange".
She attributed these misfortunes to her daughter's addiction to "games."
In today's Chinese context, "games" often refer to video games. In the more than two decades of the rapid development of China's informatization, "games" have repeatedly been controversial such as "Internet addiction" and "electronic opium".
On August 30, 2021, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the Notice on Further Strict Management and Effectively Preventing Minors from Addicting to Online Games on its official website, requiring all online game companies to provide 1 hour of service to minors from 20:00 to 21:00 every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays. This has been called "the strictest anti-addiction policy in history" on the Internet.
Since the new regulations were implemented, the controversy over "games" has continued.
Changed children
Wen Jie will not forget that since one day last November, her life has undergone a sudden change. On that day, she casually checked the consumption flow of WeChat and found that since June, there have been more than 3,000 yuan in game expenditures. For her family, it's not a small sum of money: She works as a waitress at a farm in Huanggang, Hubei Province, earning 50 yuan a day; her husband works small jobs at construction sites and earns an erratic income.
Returning home in the evening, Wen Jie asked her daughter Xiaohui, a 15-year-old and third year of junior high school, if she had been playing games recently? Xiaohui said that she played occasionally. She asked again, is it full of money? Xiaohui said that it was charged a little, but I don't know how much.
Wen Jie threw the bill on her mobile phone in front of Xiaohui and accused her of not understanding things. Xiao Hui shook her neck and quarreled with her, "She said that she charged it, so what?" ”
A similar incident occurred at Zhang Haining's home in a village in northern Fujian. In the summer of 2020, Zhang Haining accidentally found out that one of his bank cards had more than 2,000 yuan of game expenditure in half a year. He called his 10-year-old son Yangyang yan to ask, and Yangyang admitted, "Fifty or one hundred at a time, many times, and deleted the deduction text messages." ”
Since then, Zhang Haining has explicitly forbidden his son to play mobile games, and his son has promised, "In fact, he is trying his best to steal games." "The family is making a lot of noise because of this."
Zhang Haining has two retired old mobile phones, although they do not plug in the card, they can be used even with a wireless network. To prevent his son from sneaking around, he hid his old cell phone in cabinets, jars, and clothes. But they were all turned over by the son. The son will also come to the mobile phone for reasons such as reading school notices and checking subject assignments. Zhang Haining walked away and returned half an hour or an hour later, and his son said that his homework had not yet been checked. On several occasions, Zhang Haining returned by surprise and caught the child playing a game.
"What can be done? At most, it is two sentences of criticism. Zhang Haining said, "The child said that he would not do homework, and he would have to check the Internet with his mobile phone, and I could not help but check it for him." The only thing he was pleased with was that Yangyang was still "well-behaved", and when criticized, "just look at the sky, look at the earth, and never return your mouth." ”
Wen Jie felt an "unprecedented despair." The day after the quarrel with his daughter over game consumption, her husband, who had returned home from work, heard the reason, trembled with anger, and beat his daughter.
Family conflicts broke out. The daughter went on hunger strike for nearly a week and was taken to the hospital for nutritional hanging injections. After being discharged from the hospital, her daughter "seemed to have completely changed as a person", did not like to talk, and always shut herself in the room to play with her mobile phone, "I didn't eat food, and I didn't wash my bath." Call her to eat, and if she's playing a game, she'll "scream like crazy." In the past six months, her performance ranking in the county has dropped from more than 1,000 to nearly 3,000.
In April, when Wen Jie was doing laundry for her daughter, she inadvertently washed a note she had left in her jeans pocket, "which said the game account number given to her by her classmates." The daughter picked up a stool, broke it, and yelled at Wen Jie for some "very dirty words", so she slammed the door and left.
Wen Jie was heartbroken. In her impression, Xiaohui would sweep the floor, wipe the table, cook noodles for herself to eat when she was in elementary school, and make shoes with her to sell to subsidize the family. Wen Jie works as a waiter at the farm, only two days a month, serving dishes and cleaning for more than ten hours a day, and when she returns home, she is often exhausted, xiaohui will soak her feet, "even cover my feet in my arms for warmth." ”
Now, the daughter has changed, wenjie believes that it is the video game that has changed the daughter.
Young people surf the Internet in Internet cafes. Figure/IC photo
Where does "addiction" come from
Five years ago, the village where Zhang Haining lived was connected to the wireless network, and the children in the village gradually nestled at the foot of the walls of each house "pile by pile", "holding the mobile phone and rubbing the wifi." He is not very clear when his son Yangyang joined it, but he only knows that his son is playing a game of "playing around and very exciting".
Since he banned his son from playing games two years ago, he has noticed that his son's learning concentration is gradually declining, "Before, the first thing a child did when he came home was to do homework, and now he is grinding and rubbing when he comes home, and when he finds an opportunity, he will ask me to borrow my mobile phone to check my homework." Several times, Zhang Haining took a nap, woke up in the early morning, and found that the child was still in the living room "holding the mobile phone to write homework."
Last week, my son proposed that he had scored a hundred points in the exam and wanted to play with his mobile phone, "My wife agreed and gave him the mobile phone - I said that if you take a hundred points in one subject, you have to play with your mobile phone, so what if you take two subjects and three subjects?" How can you study well and how can you attach conditions? Zhang Haining took the phone back, and the child "jumped around and cried."
Zhang Haining concluded that his son was "fascinated" by the game.
Wen Jie remembers that about two years ago, her daughter's school began to take online classes due to the epidemic, and she gave an old mobile phone to her daughter to use. As for whether her daughter started playing games from then on, she did not pay attention. The only indication came last June, when a friend told her that her WeChat id showed playing a tower-pushing game that should be operated by her daughter. But she thought, "I'm tired of studying in school, and when I'm resting, I'm just going to play." "There was no interference.
It wasn't until the "money- and" incident that she realized that her daughter, who had not even watched much TV before, had a very big "addiction" to games, "thinking about upgrading and breaking through all day long." ”
She tried to ask her daughter why she was addicted to games, and she replied that all children love to play.
"The level and goal in the game are very clear, and you can upgrade to a level by fighting this monster, set a small goal, and continue to reward after achieving it, which can stimulate the secretion of more dopamine." Shang Junjie, an associate professor at the School of Education of Peking University, once analyzed that the reason why people love to play video games is to enjoy the physiological stimulation that comes with it.
Rao Yichen, a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Hong Kong, has done fieldwork related to "Internet addicted teenagers". He recalled that at that time, the "Internet addicted teenagers" he contacted were mostly addicted to "highly competitive games", such as shooting games, tower pushing games and so on.
He said that the design of many popular games at the moment "takes advantage of the weakness of human nerves", and each game gives people a "short, flat, fast" stimulation, and it is more difficult for children to resist this stimulation. Correspondingly, children are prone to falling into video games and cannot extricate themselves.
On July 28, 2021, in Shanghai, children played online games in an electronics store during the summer vacation. Figure /IC photo
"In fact, those teenagers generally have a medium and upper level of cognition." Rao Yichen said that he communicated with "Internet addicted teenagers" and found that most of them could objectively recognize that they had spent too much time or money on video games. ”
He observed that pressure from family and society is often one of the reasons why teenagers become addicted to games. "Many children are educated to get good grades and go to good schools in order to be recognized by parents and society. They are forced to compete in such a competitive track, and there is a gap between the results obtained and the expectations of parents and society. So, they'll find solace in a game world that gets positive feedback quickly. ”
Sun Hongyan, director of the Institute of Children and Adolescents at the China Youth Research Center, led a team to investigate more than 10,000 minors, and found that the family environment also has an impact on children's attitudes towards play: in a democratic family environment, the proportion of children addicted to games is 1.7%, in authoritarian families, the proportion of children addicted to games is 9.7%, and in laissez-faire families, the proportion of this data is as high as 11.7%.
Occasionally, Zhang Haining would exchange mobile games with his son, "I asked him why he likes to play games so much? He said that in the game you can shoot and fight, and there will be "the joy of success.". ”
But he still claims to be adamant about not allowing his son to play video games: "Even if you have a great sense of accomplishment in the game, what you learn is useless." ”
Wen Jie analyzed: "Maybe the game is deliberately designed to be addictive? It made her resentful. During the interview, she always couldn't help but ask: Why not ban the game?
Twenty years of "anti-addiction"
In fact, China began to supervise and manage the video game activities of young people as early as twenty years ago.
Since 2002, the State Council, the State Administration of Press and Publication and other departments have successively issued relevant policies, such as "Internet Internet service business premises business units must not accept minors to enter the business premises", "set the 'healthy game time' of minor players to less than 3 hours", "all online game operators put into use anti-addiction systems" and so on.
Initially, however, these attempts had little effect. Some media published articles to analyze, in the early years, because various game companies did not have the authority to transfer and verify the ID number and name from the Ministry of Public Security, the anti-addiction system required by the policy could not achieve a 100% real-name system, "(Minors) find an ID card generator on the Internet, or find parents, relatives, janitors and uncles to borrow an ID card to enter, and even sell adult information online to help register an account, you can easily step into the adult world." ”
In recent years, a number of Internet companies have cooperated with the Ministry of Public Security on identity authentication systems, and the situation has improved.
In October 2019, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the Notice on Preventing Minors from Addicting to Online Games, proposing that "from 22:00 to 8:00 the next day, online game enterprises shall not provide game services to minors in any form" and "users aged 8 to 16 years old shall not exceed 50 yuan in a single recharge, and the cumulative amount of monthly recharge shall not exceed 200 yuan".
On August 30, 2021, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the Notice on Further Strict Management and Effectively Preventing Minors from Addicting to Online Games (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), proposing that "all online game enterprises may only provide 1 hour of service to minors from 20:00 to 21:00 every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays" and "shall not provide game services in any form to users who have not registered and logged in with real names." ”
This has been called "the strictest anti-addiction policy in history" by the industry.
According to the latest report of the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association, after the introduction of the new anti-addiction policy in 2021, more than 80% of the parents surveyed said that their children's time playing video games has decreased to varying degrees, of which 43% of parents said that it was "significantly reduced". In addition, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily questionnaire, after the release of the "Notice" in August last year, the proportion of students who "play games for 1-3 hours a week" fell by 4.36%, and the proportion of students who "did not spend on online games" rose from 87.06% to 90.17%.
In order to cooperate with the policy, large domestic game companies such as Tencent and NetEase have launched parental supervision platforms. For example, parents can bind their children's game accounts through Tencent's "Growth Guardian Platform" and monitor their children's game behavior in real time. According to Tencent insiders, the system found that the account with the real name of an adult has the behavioral characteristics of suspected minors, and will require face recognition authentication when logging in or consuming games; for the night login behavior of real-name users over the age of 55, the system will also enable face recognition to prevent minors from fraudulently using parent accounts or devices.
Wenjie set her daughter Xiaohui's game account to a teenager mode on the parental supervision platform, and the duration of playing games with this account cannot exceed two hours. However, at the beginning of this year, she found that her daughter had borrowed someone else's account to play a tower pushing game.
Zhang Haining recently heard people say, "Children need face authentication to charge games. His son Yangyang has never consumed video games, and instead of playing the previous game of "fighting and killing", he has instead played a game of "cutting down trees and building houses".
He said his son had two pages of apps packed on his phone, "so I thought that even though some games had time limits, he could always find something to play." ”
On July 28, 2021, children played a shooting game in the mall. Figure/IC photo
Respond and guide correctly
Times have changed, Wen Jie sighed.
When she was young, the entertainment with her partners was limited to activities such as jumping rope and kicking shuttlecocks, or going shopping in the town and county, "even tv is difficult to see." Zhang Haining also felt the same way, and the games he made in his childhood were nothing more than going down the river to touch fish, playing in the water, or making two wooden pistols and pretending to be the People's Liberation Army to fight. Today, from birth, their children are immersed in the ocean of electronic technology and the Internet.
Parents are worried about the future.
Zhang Haining thought that when his son went to middle school, he would always be given a mobile phone, "Now this is a necessary tool, without a mobile phone, people are like blind people." As for the subsequent game time management, "it can only rely on the child's self-awareness." ”
Wen Jie said that she never thought of confiscating her daughter's mobile phone, "Confiscation is unrealistic, now which child does not play with mobile phones?" And always let the child and classmates chat on QQ. All she wants is for her children to allow time from the electronic world, "to do what they should do well, to read well." But she had no idea in her heart, hoping that the child would "become sensible."
"The 'pot' of children addicted to games should not just be thrown at parents. Parents, like children, do not understand the diversity and complexity of games, and they usually feel that all games are bad things. So how do they judge what games are good and should be played by children? Scholar Liu Mengfei said, "They can only hope that children will completely stay away from video games and play no games." This is not possible in modern society, so what is left for parents is a sense of powerlessness. ”
In 2015, Liu Mengfei opened the first game research course in China, "Game Research and Gamification", in Beijing Normal University, dedicated to video game research and de-stigmatization.
"Now when we talk about video games, we say electronic opium and electronic heroin, but in fact, the game industry is very complex and diverse." Liu Mengfei believes that the games on the market can be divided into gambling games, consumer games, and works games, and different types of games should have different management methods.
"I think that gambling games, which are common card draw games in the market, should be forbidden for teenagers to touch, because the core mechanism of this game is gambling." Liu Mengfei explained, "And those games that are free to download and pay for props, I classify them as consumer games. Its core is a set of consumption and social systems, such as children buy skins in the game, just look good in front of friends, but the game ability has not become invincible, and it has not crushed other players in the game experience because of consumption, which is the balance of consumer games. So, just like snacking, children can play consumer games appropriately – but children shouldn't just play consumer games. ”
Liu Mengfei believes that what is really beneficial to children is the game of works, "a game that can bring spiritual touch, knowledge, culture and aesthetic expression." For example, she said that she played a martial arts game, and the player needed to learn the musical knowledge of "Gongshang Kaku Seongyu", and to master the art of medicine in the game, she also needed to memorize an ancient humanoid cave map. For example, a series of navigation games that she used to play as a child, in which players can take a boat to the unknown waters of the earth, in the game, there are both "expressions of the subjective initiative of the characters of the Great Navigation Age" and "the study of history and historical figures". Before each exam, she would play this game to integrate her knowledge of memorized geography.
However, in the more than two decades since the rapid development of informatization, consumer games and gambling games on the market have become popular, and real works of games have become very rare. Therefore, Liu Mengfei said that in addition to supervising the establishment of anti-addiction systems, the relevant departments should also give appropriate support to the works of games, "such as giving more version numbers, supporting the establishment of archives, opening more game education disciplines in more schools, etc., so that game education and game research have a more formal system." ”
"The advent of video games is the trend of the times, and we should not go against the trend. Nowadays, it is impossible to prevent teenagers from being exposed to games. What we can do is to let the school give children the correct game education, cultivate their game aesthetics, game time concept, game consumption concept, so that they realize what games are good and what games are bad. In this way, the so-called Internet addiction problem in society may be greatly improved. Liu Mengfei said that this can also change the powerless situation of the parent group.
On the other hand, in the short term, parents try to change their children in their own way.
Zhang Haining set up a ping-pong table at home and played with his son when he was free. He was actually a busy man, taking care of the family's acres of land, and often had to do work such as chopping moso bamboo, digging bamboo shoots, and pickling dried fish. "When a child stays at home alone for half a day during the holidays, he may watch TV for half a day or play with his mobile phone for half a day." He was determined to spend more time with his son.
At the beginning of the conflict with her daughter, Wen Jie couldn't sleep all night, "I have a heart that wants to die." Later, she consulted the online tutorial and applied on the platform to return more than 3,000 yuan of her daughter's recharge. In May, at the suggestion of the platform counselor, she wrote two letters for her daughter, folded them up and put them on her pillow.
She wrote in a compromise in the letter, "Mom doesn't ask you to do more, she asks you to do your own things well, and after doing a good job, you want to play with your mobile phone casually, you can play..."
When my daughter came home, she read the letter and talked to her. The next day, she led her daughter to the county to go shopping and talked deeply at the milk tea shop. She felt like her daughter "seemed to be listening a little bit."
My daughter began to have some "original appearance", "at least willing to talk to me, willing to eat, bathe, and be able to clean herself up." "On Mother's Day, my daughter gave her a greeting card and a card. The hairpin is golden in texture and embedded with more than a dozen large red beads. Wen Jie felt a long-lost sense of relief.
On Mother's Day, the daughter gave Wenjie a greeting card and a card. Courtesy of respondents
The game is still playing though. Wen Jie said that her daughter has recently changed her appetite and played a cartoon-style, running around game. She didn't know anything about it, and her daughter told her it was an "adventure game." Wen Jie abided by the agreement and acquiesced to her daughter's game rights.
On May 27, at 9 o'clock in the evening when Wen Jie was interviewed, her daughter began her "adventure" in the next room.
(Wen Jie and Zhang Haining are pseudonyms)