Parents given control of child accounts in online addiction fight

Parents will be allowed direct control of their children's accounts on mainland-based online game websites, as the central government tries a new strategy to curb addiction.

The Parental Supervision Project would be launched jointly by eight departments including the Ministry of Public Security on March 1, Xinhua reported last week.

Under the programme, parents may choose to tell game website operators at what times the children will be allowed to play each week and for how long, or to block the account entirely. The operators, such as shanda.com, are being ordered to set up a hotline and web pages to respond to parents' inquiries and observe their children's accounts.

But one issue is how effective the project will be. Both parents and children have already expressed doubts, saying it is easy for children to register new accounts and access to the internet from anywhere, not just at home. It is too convenient for any real regulation to work well.

The mainland has 33 million teenage internet addicts, according to a recent estimate by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Early last year, a national survey by the China Youth Internet Association found more than 24 million, or 14 per cent, of young people in mainland cities were internet addicts, while another 18 million had developed some symptoms of internet addiction.

This is not the first time mainland authorities have issued a joint notice to curb the growing addiction problem. In 2007, eight ministries and central government departments issued a notice and required all domestic online video game operators to install an anti-addiction system that forces young players to log out after playing games for more than five hours a day.