Meanwhile, gaming addiction can also be very destructive.
Alcohol is an addictive, psychoactive, carcinogen. The difference between drugs and “online game time” is pretty stark from my perspective.
The essence of your argument seems to be: “we already give up some control for other health-related regulations and online game time is no different.”
I have to admit, drawing the exact line is difficult and I’m unable to create a clear definition of government overreach. This specific example is obvious to me, but clearly some people disagree.
Where do you think the line should be? Would you be okay with CCP mandated exercise, sleep time, or diet? Do you believe there should be a line at all?
Not trying to be adversarial here, I am genuinely curious.
But it's more of a experiment - life is an experiment.
To your last question, many jurisdictions are making fast food or sugary drinks illegal thus imposing a diet. I am fine with that. Some company are lowering health premium to those who do exercise, imposing exercise. I am fine with that too..
Requires elaboration. When "online game time" is intentionally designed to be addictive, its affects on addicts need to be critically examined - loss of physical fitness, loss of social fitness, loss of motivation, agoraphobia. That both can be consumed responsibly in small quantities does not preclude that addiction is a serious problem and too often not treated like a serious problem in Western countries.
I mean, yes, "other countries" don't have age limits, but it's pretty rare and it's overwhelmingly not what you'd call successful or stable countries.
The link they posted even has a pretty picture within of the areas without age limits. They’re all mostly in Africa, Vietnam has a shout at stable and successful though.
And more and more online games use psychological tactics to encourage spending.
Emphasizing the physical effects of alcohol, and reducing the mental effects of any human computer interaction to “watching and interacting with pixels on a screen” isn’t the right way to go about it.
There’s a difference between checking your feed and doom scrolling, there’s a difference between playing fortnite with friends, maybe even a little too late into the night, and compulsively grinding.
The dose makes the poison.
My bad.
There's no such clear definition of 'games'. So there is potential for interpretation and overreach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM6hEOtV92E
When kids game excessively, I'd wager it's an escape for them. It's an escape just as much as it was for the geeky / nerdy kids of America, as it is for the kids in China who have goukou.
You can try to enforce whatever culture you're gonna enforce, but I think we've seen from the war on drugs that these kinds of things don't really work. There's always some deep psychological and/or physiological deficit whenever there is an "addiction" at play. And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms. You can try to tighten control so that you can try to force that "ideal" society, but when you do that, things have a way of becoming authoritarian in a handbasket. Everything messed up about China is about socialist idealism turning authoritarian, and you can say that about other countries too.
People should have figured that out when they did that study on rats, where the rats that lived in some enriched environment, with plenty of playtime, did not get addicted to sugar water the way that the rats trapped in cages did.
I think we're bad at prediction - so why not let them experiment and see how it turns out 50 years later.
> And you're trying to treat the disease by treating the symptoms
So, for example, Opiods. In the United States we're treating the symptoms by banning it (and this is pretty much supported by both political parties). Yet we know the root cause: People that are effectively feeling worthless, do not feel connected to a specific social group and/or disengaged from culture.
Other aspects of our entire culture is causing people to feel like that: 1. Changing family values, 2. Disconnected from people, connected to devices and online popularity, 3. Impossible to succeed and feel valuable.
I feel like we have a really weird problem: Our capitalistic environment or, greed in general, are driving these problems. So the solution is authoritarianism.
Sorry that's just the way my mind works. I see right through issues to their root causes and it makes my worldview weird.
Edit: and too many newspapers?
It was a mild addiction and the feelings of my teacher was that it could be disruptive to my experience and those of students around me.
Different magnitudes.