I think it’s such a boomer-y perspective to treat phones as toys. For a lot of people, smartphones are their main computer. People do their homework, do research, learn languages, fill out forms, and lots of other productive activities.
Even communication is not frivolous. What if someone wants to talk to their father working in a factory in distant Guangdong for their birthday?
What counts as “education”? China recently has the chess world champion. Is studying opening chess moves “education”? I doubt it. Is reading video game websites in English to study English “education “? There are so many useful ways to let people flourish by following their passions.
There are so many useful ways to let people flourish by following their passions.
You know that’s sort of the opposite of how China operates, right? I mean, to be fair they have 1.4 BILLION people and a very centrally-planned authoritarian government that doesn’t have much flexibility. When the Chinese government is doing their planning they’ll often designate entire regions of the country like, “these folks will be textile workers” or “these folks will be farmers”. The last thing they want is for any large number of people to “follow their passions” because it would completely screw up their plans!
I’m sure they expect–and hope–some useful deviants emerge from their centrally-planned education and economy but I’m positive they’d prefer it if at least 99.9% of the population just falls in line.
I am all for criticizing authoritarianism, but I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration (similar things were said of the supposedly “conformist” Japanese in the 80s and 90s). You don’t hear the same things said of the US, even though the US school system is one of the most segregated in the developed world. If you grow up in certain neighborhoods, often along racial lines, you are designated to be a poorly paid service worker, with no real option to follow your passions. Social mobility in China remains higher than in the US.
In any case, we’re mostly in agreement inasmuch as I’m obviously criticizing this bad authoritarian policy in China.
For example, I play a mobile game where if you have an iOS account that is set as an “under 13” account anywhere in the settings, the in-game chat is permanently turned off for you. But, there’s nothing that stops an actual 10-year-old from having an account that doesn’t have the age settings, thusly allowing them to access whatever gets said in the game chat.
The proposals for app devs described in the article also don’t make a lot of sense and sound like huge hurdles to overcome.
China actually already has a system in place that kinda works for their existing video game restrictions - your accounts are connected to your social ID, or to a social media which in turn is connected to your social ID. Alternatively I wouldn’t be surprised if like what they do is connect your SIM card to your national number (which is possible - some countries do it for 2FA for government stuff and banking) which is what they use to control internet usage
…of course it does little against the tried and true method of “using your mum’s phone/ID for games”
Yeah cell phone use and access to the internet in general is so ingrained in most modern cultures that it really can’t be meaningfully stopped. These devices connect people, particularly teenagers to friends, significant others, trending news, and provides an outlet to many things they don’t have other accesses to as not-yet-adults. Full implementation of this law would literally be enough to start the next cultural revolution.
Should instead be on the device and/or carrier side of things. Allow to set limits on mobile/wifi data and screen usage on the OS level for parental controls. Should definitely not be enforced by governments, but rather easily enforceable by parents.
I can’t help but think Chinese parents are as reasonable as US or EU parents. Letting your teen drive a car risks joyriding but also means they run errands and pick up groceries for you. Limiting a teen’s phone time means they’re going to prioritize friends and mischief over responding to parents or researching for schoolwork given their 120 minutes.
Worn on the head by the subject the device can pick up a spike in brainwaves triggered by explicit content, each time an indecent photo appeared, an alarm went off.
These are teenagers - if you make a law telling them not to do something, you're just making them want to do it. There's a reason why young Russian hackers are some of the best - it's a direct result of the restrictions Putin put on the Russian internet. The CCP just made the dark web cool, and I have a feeling that once this law goes into effect, we're going to see a whole generation of Chinese hackers inspired to hone their craft as a result.
When I think “young Russian hackers” I think, “folks that broke into ATMs, Bitcoin scammers, and organized crime.” That doesn’t make them amazing hackers it just makes them unethical opportunists.
I’m not sure how common my own experience is, but I’ve lost most of my friends from group toxicity. Not to have a messiah complex, but the whole reason my “friends” hung out for years was because of me and my parties. I stopped having parties and we were still just as close. As soon as I settled down with someone out side of the group, a few of them started causing problems to the point that I disassociated from the group.
Last year my wife and I went to a BBQ (that I had to be persuaded to go to by my wife, who took the brunt of the bullying) where they apologized for how they treated us. We thought everything was good. It came to light that we were not invited to their big get together this year. Then it was clear they were purposely excluding us from a ton of things. No one wished me a happy birthday, though they knew when it was, and my “best” friend regularly travels a hundred miles to another friend’s house that is 10 miles away, but I haven’t seen him since his birthday, which I traveled a hundred miles away for.
It’s sad feeling the bridges are burned, but I would much rather spend time with my family than the friends that justify hurting my family.
All it takes is staying in touch to continue being friends. I have a bunch of people from grade school I’m still friends with. My high school friends are still there too. Any one of us can pick up the phone or shoot a random text at any time like we just chilled last night.
Do we all get together and go to the bar or something every weekend? No of course not. No one has the time or even wants to do that anymore. Am I still friends with everyone from my groups of buddies back in the day? No. And that’s completely fine.
Perfect example is last night a good friend of mine I haven’t seen in years and only talked to a couple times since like 2013 called me. He called me just to tell me a joke and the punchline was hanging up suddenly. He called me right back and we had a good laugh. We probably won’t talk for a few years from now. Who knows. It doesn’t matter.
Say hey man how’ve you been to an old friend. That’s all it takes to stay friends.
telegraph.co.uk
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