China wants to limit teens to using their phones for just an hour a day to fight rising ‘internet addiction’::The Cyberspace Administration of China announced proposed regulations for children’s smartphone usage, including a “minor mode” with time limits.

  • Zerlyna@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My 11 year old niece has an iPad and even with time limits I have on it she uses it to the max each day.

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Sounds it’s just parental controls? So easily bypassed if parents don’t care.

    • Screwthehole@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s China they could end up hard coding that crap and using face verification and all that stuff.

        • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Potentially, but even if they did that, the sites with all the good custom android ROMs are probably all blocked by their “great firewall.”

          Besides, the second you connect to the internet or cell service there, they have instant access to your device. There’s a reason why they have one of, if not the most, advanced systems set up to monitor and track you no matter where you go or what you do.

      • arin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They already do, most apps require a legit id to create an account and your id would have your age and thus time limit access. Certain hours are prohibited at night until morning

    • Botree@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know if that’s really a good thing, but they have done quite a few decent things like cracking down on the rich for tax evasion (and using the billions “donated” by big corps to provide aid to the lower SES population), and the famous for grooming and sexual assaults. I’m no fan of an authoritarian regime, but there aren’t many places in this world where the rich and famous suffer the consequences of fucking around.

        • Botree@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well, the crackdown has definitely scared the market and wiped out more than $1 trillion worth of stock value. It’s a fascinating case study of the fusion between communism and capitalism, as well as the convergence of centralized control and economic liberalism.

    • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      It’s hard to separate out what the media tells us - for instance I thought I’d been tricked by fake news when I heard that Russia was banning cigarettes for people born on a certain year and below forever. But it turned out it was true!

    • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      It’s only good until you realize how much it starts demanding identification and biometrics to properly implement. Just look at some of the laws being passed in the states in the name of protecting people. It’s that type of stuff that gradually leads to pseudonym websites like reddit or lemmy to erode away into more Meta type ones that lock your account until you send them photos of your identification.

      Need to look past the this sounds like a good ideology and more into what are they going to start requiring when it comes to your daily use of tech. Of course only appealing to ideologies and buying into it is what governments lean on.

      • themarty27@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Well, I’m by far not a fan of invasive policies either, but the CCP is constantly spying on its citizens anyway. No privacy and no phone-addicted youth sounds better than no privacy, period.

        • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          I’m not in support of trying to control what people do. And I’m guessing those for it tend to be in support if they believe they won’t be subjected to it themselves, but would suddenly shift if they found themselves under the same policy.

          That’s how it usually seems to go. Individuals thinking they are above the policy and in a special class. Believing it’s others that need controlling and not themselves.

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          If this can indeed be a mandate instead of just “demand parental controls”, the issue would be inflexibility. For a lot of people, limit would be enough. But for a lot, who are using their phones for actually beneficial purposes, it is not, and such people (who can also be talented and useful) are completely disregarded by universal rules like this. I myself firmly believe that smartphones are not suitable for actual work, but every situation is individual, for a lot it might be genuinely necessary. Also maybe things like LineageOS could bypass this anyway.

      • HaggierRapscallier@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        They’ve always been heavyhanded on that front, they manage a huge population and a standard police force can’t do all the enforcing for them.

    • simonced@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Aren’t they doing that because teens spend more time on the screen than in the mines?..

      (dark humour, I know…)

    • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      they’re mandating that phones have these controls available to parents for free, not that they are on. Makes a lot of sense imo

      • devious@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The article suggests otherwise:

        No Chinese person under 18 would be allowed to use a smartphone for more than two hours a day if the rules become law.

      • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Yeah and then they mandatorily hard code a face scanner in that automatically activates that mode… They have already done that with PCs.