Tencent adds eye protection function to videos after Beijing calls for action to prevent myopia in children

Chinese internet giant Tencent has introduced an eyesight protection feature for its Tencent Video mobile app that blurs the image if the viewer is too close to the screen, a move seen as a proactive response to the government’s nationwide myopia prevention campaign for minors.

When a user’s face gets closer than 40cm to the screen, the video blurs and an alert pops up asking them to move the phone further away.

Targeting children and their parents, the eye protection feature can be enabled on Tencent’s video streaming app, according to a statement posted on Tencent’s official WeChat social media account.

“The Tencent Video team is introducing this new feature to add ‘safety’ and ‘reassurance’ to our young users and their parents,” the statement said.

Tencent said the real time sensing and distance data that was collected would not be stored or shared with a third party. The eye protection feature will not apply to Tencent games at this time. “We will continue to explore possibilities to use cutting-edge technologies in real scenarios in games,” the company said in a separate statement.

The enhancement, powered by Apple’s TrueDepth camera system introduced with the iPhone X, uses depth sensing technology to measure the distance between the user’s face and phone. The Tencent feature will only be available on iPhone X and the newly launched iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, which also use TrueDepth.