Chinese Government is Considering Measures Against Excessive Tiktok Consumption by Young People

The Chinese government is studying possible measures to tackle addiction to short videos in young people. Those videos are distributed by Chinese tech companies such as ByteDance (Tiktok) and Tencent.

Last week, the government agency responsible for media held a meeting. Ways to increase oversight of the sector were discussed. In addition, the agency called for a “healthy development” of the video sector and calls for quality improvements.

The agency did not name any companies. A short statement says that it is essential to prevent minors from spending too much time on it. However, it is not clear whether concrete measures will follow.

In 2021, the Chinese government abruptly introduced a limit for gaming: children are only allowed to play games for three hours a week. It thus attacked large Chinese companies such as Tencent and NetEase.

The format of short videos, best known to us from Tiktok, has become very popular worldwide in recent years. Teenagers, in particular, devour them.