Do short video platforms need to be “anti-addiction”?

While adults are chatting, children are watching short videos; while adults are working, children are watching short videos; when children are not allowed to play games, they watch short videos... With the popularity of short video apps, the above phenomena are common. Based on this, the author of this article raises the topic of "Do we need to prevent addiction to short videos?" and conducts analysis and answers. Let's take a look.

Behind the new round of anti-mobile phone addiction efforts is the anxiety about entertainment apps.

The age of people becoming addicted to short videos is getting younger.

Last weekend, I visited a distant relative. I chatted with the couple for two hours, and their 10-year-old child was browsing his phone next to me for two hours. From the sound, I could hear live broadcasts and funny short videos.

It was not until I was about to leave that his mother took his phone and said, "The guests are leaving, but you can't bear to put your phone down. When will you put your phone down and study hard?"

Today I saw another post on the Internet: It is recommended to completely stop providing online gaming services to minors.

The wonderful reply below received high praise, "It doesn't matter, short videos will be released anyway."

Children living in cities can still be supervised by their parents and their mobile phone playing time can be controlled, but left-behind children in rural areas are more addicted to short videos because their parents are not around for a long time.

In the past few decades, left-behind children have had very limited entertainment options, but the only difference is that now they have smartphones, games and short videos.

As smart phones become more and more popular, the phenomenon of left-behind children in rural areas becoming addicted to their phones is becoming more and more common. Mobile phones have completely replaced "traditional" entertainment activities such as hopscotch, throwing sandbags, taking photos of foreign paintings, and hide-and-seek.

Recently, a survey titled "Investigation and Countermeasures on Mobile Phone Addiction Problems among Left-behind Children in Rural Areas" has become a hot topic.

The survey pointed out that the situation of increasing time spent playing with mobile phones and earlier age of access to the Internet is "getting worse" among left-behind children. Some students even stay up for five days and five nights due to playing with their mobile phones, causing serious mental and physical harm to them.

Recently, the State Administration of Radio and Television has begun to deploy measures to strengthen the management of short videos and prevent minors from becoming addicted to them. The prevention of short video addiction among minors has entered the regulatory period .

In a context where many adults have become dependent on mobile phones, what about minors who have unstable minds and unformed values?

1. The era of Internet addiction

The "Wind from the Fields" research team of Wuhan University conducted a survey on left-behind children.

The survey found that 90% of left-behind children in rural areas use their own mobile phones or their elders’ mobile phones to play for a long time. Among them, nearly 70% of children use their mobile phones to watch short videos, and 1/3 use them to play mobile games.

It is obvious that most elders regard mobile phones as "electronic babysitters" and lack awareness of the possible harm caused by their grandchildren's addiction to mobile phones.

Many teachers also reported that it has gradually become a trend for children in their classes to become addicted to mobile phones. Many children gather in groups to play games until two or three in the morning, and continue playing after getting up the next day.

The research team even found that to some extent, short videos are also a way for left-behind children to relieve loneliness and stress, but it should be noted that addiction and decompression are two different concepts.

In the context of limited self-control, the phenomenon of being addicted to short videos has always existed.

The entertainment values ​​promoted on the Internet are subtly influencing children's "three views".

Some Internet companies have taken the initiative to assume social responsibility and have taken some measures to prevent minors from becoming addicted, including limiting the gaming time of minors and developing youth modes, and have achieved certain results.

But minors can still bypass these restrictions by filling in adult information.

Minors have not yet formed their "three views", and the bad content contained in many APPs also has an impact on minors.

It can be said that the Internet is full of mixed entertainment content.

For example, some mobile games contain violent elements. Even if the application manufacturers restrict the use of uncivilized language in chat texts, it is still unavoidable during live broadcasts.

Some short videos contain pornographic and other negative content, which can also cause serious psychological problems for left-behind children.

More importantly, with the precise push of big data, the content that minors are exposed to is becoming more and more focused. For minors who do not have strong self-control, the time they are addicted to it will also increase accordingly.

In this regard, a relevant official from the Cyberspace Administration of China also pointed out that despite repeated warnings from management departments, some short video platforms still act recklessly, allowing the spread of illegal and harmful information such as vulgarity, spoofs, absurdity and even pornography and violence, "causing serious adverse effects on the majority of netizens, especially young netizens, and the violations are serious, causing strong social reactions."

Some parents even push their minors in front of the camera to shoot short videos.

Minors lack cognitive abilities and are physically and mentally immature. They have no clear understanding of video shooting and live streaming. Whether they like it or are willing to do it? It is very likely that no one cares.

2. “Press down the gourd, and the ladle will pop up”

In fact, despite years of crackdown on vulgar content in various short videos, such problems still continue to emerge.

According to data released by Gansu Daily, as of February 15, 509 anchors involved in vulgarity had been summoned, 87 had been administratively punished, 30 had been criminally prosecuted, and 53 accounts had been banned.

More importantly, based on the clues they had, the Cyber ​​Security Brigade of the Jingyuan County Public Security Bureau expanded its investigation and opened a case against 10 netizens who used short video platforms to live-stream and sell unhealthy videos for a fee using social software such as WeChat and QQ.

All this means that short videos are insufficient in reviewing vulgar and inappropriate content.

In addition, according to the distribution map of netizens' comments, some online platforms' youth modes are full of loopholes. Nearly 40% of netizens are dissatisfied with the fact that some online platforms' "youth modes" are just formalities, and hope that relevant departments will increase supervision of online platform companies.

Image source: Wenlv China

The China Youth Research Center released a research report on the use of youth mode in short videos by minors in 2021. Among nearly 4,000 valid samples, only 53.3% of minors have used the youth mode. Among these minors who used the youth mode, only 33.3% were required by their parents or teachers to use it.

In addition to insufficient review of inappropriate content in short videos, there is also the problem of minors imitating inappropriate videos and popular memes.

For example, some short videos with no nutritional value, for the sake of traffic and making money, will inevitably instill some bad ideas and concepts, subtly influencing left-behind children who are addicted to mobile phones.

Statistics show that 51% of fans of Internet celebrities are under the age of 18. In other words, more than half of fans of Internet celebrities are minors whose minds are not yet mature.

With social software like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, some bloggers and internet celebrities seem to have no need to work and just eat, drink and have fun every day. This will not only cause a psychological gap for the left-behind children in the village, but they may even imitate them and go to extremes.

The most obvious thing is that although live streaming apps have restricted live streaming to minors under the age of 16, there are still many minors who shoot imitation videos and undergo plastic surgery in order to become internet celebrities.

Zhou Chuna, a post-00s internet celebrity, is one of them. Zhou Chuna was born in 2004 and is only 19 years old. Compared with other people of the same age, she has a history of plastic surgery for nearly 4 years.

What is even more dangerous is that due to the low cost of breaking the law, some minors have begun to ignore regulations in order to shoot videos.

On April 8, 2022, in Qinzhou, Guangxi, the police received a report from netizens that an underage internet celebrity was driving without a license and filming a video to show off. After checking, the police found that the situation was true and fined her 1,500 yuan and gave her a safety education.

Bad short videos shot by minors will attract other minors of the same age to watch. Similarly, for minors, "what to like" and "how to like" become the key, and APP manufacturers also need to strengthen their review.

Obviously, many entertainment apps need to contribute to solving the problem of preventing minors from becoming addicted to mobile phones.

Of course, in order to prevent minors from becoming addicted to mobile phones, in addition to the need for APP manufacturers to take the initiative to improve content review and usage time limits, behind the new problem of left-behind children's mobile phone addiction, there is also the problem of parents' lack of companionship and guidance for their children.

3. Minors do not need electronic babysitters

It is indeed necessary to prevent addiction, but how do we define "short videos"?

In addition to Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu, video websites such as iQiyi and Youku also have short video sections, and even Taobao, a shopping site, WeChat, and QQ, a social network, all have short videos. Since short videos are everywhere, it is naturally difficult to regulate them.

It is more effective to find solutions from the root of the problem.

According to the survey "Rural Left-behind Children's Addiction to Mobile Phones", 49.3% of left-behind children use their elders' mobile phones. In order to prevent the children from disturbing themselves, it is very common to use mobile phones as babysitters.

According to the statistical analysis of left-behind children in China in 2022, there are currently 9.02 million left-behind children under the age of 16 in rural areas of my country, of which nearly 90% are raised by their grandparents, and another 360,000 children are left without guardians.

In the final analysis, what left-behind children lack is human capital investment, that is, education. Especially when their mothers are not around, they lack long-term companionship and interaction.

Because " interaction with others" is an important resource for children's learning . The interaction that the elderly can provide is relatively limited (the quality is generally not high, too much instruction), and it is best to be a parent, who can provide instructions and a close relationship.

However, parents are more likely to work away from home due to life pressure. But to be honest, the cost of raising children in modern society is high, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of time and energy.

Adults are busy with farm work or working away from home, and left-behind children lack parental love and a rich and colorful extracurricular life. In addition, the elderly do not know how to communicate with children, and they do not know or know how to educate children when they see unhealthy content.

In fact, not only rural children, but also urban children and adults are addicted to mobile phones.

In addition to short videos, there are also various educational apps and online courses taught through mobile phones, which greatly increases the time children spend using mobile phones, affecting the development of their vision, physical fitness and intelligence.

Taking all the reasons into consideration, the problem of underage children being addicted to mobile phones, especially left-behind children in rural areas, is a "big" problem that requires efforts from multiple parties to solve.

References:

Gansu Daily: Gansu Internet Police interviewed 509 anchors involved in vulgarity, imposed administrative penalties on 87 people, and issued criminal penalties on 30 people

Technology Brothers: Mobile phones are to blame again? Village children are addicted to mobile phones, in fact, there are more reasons

Zheng Chunfeng: Rural families, children's mobile phone use and the dilemma of parents' media intervention

China Net Cultural and Creative: Cultural Observation | The phenomenon of "mobile phone addiction" among left-behind children in rural areas is widespread, and the youth model is in name only

Author: Yong Yule; Editor: Yang Wu

Source public account: Internet Things (ID: hlw0823)