No April Fool's Day: Since April 1, a law has been in force in the Japanese prefecture of Kagawa that how much time children and adolescents under the age of 18 can spend video games per day. 60 minutes are allowed on weekdays and 90 minutes on weekends and public holidays. In addition, children up to 16 years of age can only use the PC and smartphone until 9 p.m., all other minors until 10 p.m. The strict regulation is intended to combat gambling addiction.
Parents should enforce the law
So far, no penalties have been provided for violations, instead the parents of adolescents are being held responsible. You should enforce the regulation at home. Control and enforcement by the government would also be impossible: almost a million people live in Kagawa.
The law seems to contradict Japan's plan to promote e-sports in the country – after all, many professional players are minors or at least start training at a young age.
Is Japan the third largest video game market in the worldHowever, e-sports started slowly there. It was not until 2018 that a law was passed that prohibited more than $ 900 in prize money.
The new law is criticized by many as meaningless or too strict. Among other things, Tekken developer Katsuhiro Harada spoke on Twitter:
The new Kagawa law goes into effect on Today.
A parent who did NOT grow up wisely found a scapegoat for not being able to educate their children wisely.—-
Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture Passes Law Striving to Limit Gaming for Minors to 1 Hour Per Day https://t.co/Ojd6bGion3– Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) April 1, 2020
In other parts of Japan Video games, however, played an important role during the Corona crisis Ingested: For example, schoolchildren were able to complete their closing ceremony in Minecraft despite the ban on the meeting.
Politics and e-sports are now closely linked in some parts of the world. Especially in South Korea, fraud in games can not only cost your career, but can even be punished with prison terms:
more on the subject
Cheated in LoL: Political careers at risk
Gaming addiction has been officially recognized as a disease by the WHO since 2019. However, the causes are complex and it is questionable whether such laws really address the roots of the problem. We dealt with video game addiction in a detailed report for GameStar Plus.
