Don't let children play games too much

My friend has a child in 10th grade. Besides school, he spends a lot of time playing games, sometimes up to 4-5 hours a day, regardless of the time. Not only does he play on his phone, he also plays without his parents' permission at internet cafes. This has directly affected his academic performance and his nearsightedness is getting worse. He also often complains of neck and shoulder pain. His mother has applied many measures but still cannot control his gaming.

The situation of children playing too many games without parents being able to control them happens in many other families. With good economic conditions, in order to serve communication and study, many families let their children use mobile phones quite early. The children are still young, not aware of the consequences of playing games too much, some parents are busy, not closely managing their children, internet cafes "springing up" quite a lot... are all obstacles in controlling children's gaming.

The consequences of playing too much games are clear. Doctors have shown that playing games leads to numbness and pain in the fingers, reduced range of motion in the wrists, causing pain in the hands, neck, shoulders, and nape of the neck. Players always feel tired, lose energy, are depressed, pessimistic, and irritable. Playing games also wastes money, affects studying, participating in community activities, and is afraid to communicate. There have been many cases of people having to go to the hospital for treatment because of playing too much games.

Playing games is not bad, but playing too much can cause unpredictable consequences. Therefore, to manage the provision of services and players, the Government has issued Decree No. 147/2024/ND-CPon management, provision and use of internet services and online information, effective from December 25.

Accordingly, game providers must have technical equipment to ensure continuous display of game classification results by age and specific management of each player (full name; date of birth; mobile phone number in Vietnam) for all games when introducing, advertising and releasing.

In particular, people under 18 years old are not allowed to play more than 60 minutes for each game and no more than 180 minutes a day for all games. Game players must have an authenticated account using a mobile phone number. In case the player is under 16 years old, the parent or legal guardian must register an account using the information of the parent or legal guardian and is responsible for monitoring and managing the playing time and game content of the player under 16 years old; deleting the player's information after the storage period expires according to regulations.

I see many people support this decree. This regulation does not completely ban gaming, players still have time to entertain and relax with their favorite games but within the prescribed framework and does not affect too much the time spent on other things, ensuring physical and mental health. For those who are not aware of the consequences of playing too much games, this is a necessary regulation to create a safe "wall", especially for children and students.

Vietnam is in the top 5 in game publishing in the world. In 2023, Vietnam had 54.6 million gamers and revenue reached 507 million USD. It can be said that the gaming industry in Vietnam is very developed, bringing significant income to service providers. However, the health and spirit of gamers are important.

I hope the new decree will be seriously implemented to reduce game addiction, especially among young people, and avoid the consequences of playing games.