China to Regulate Livestream Tips, 10PM Curfew for Minors

The internet is a large and hard to control place. Its hardly something that children should have unlimited access to. At least thats what the government of China believes, having recently implemented new restrictions for minors wanting to watch livestream services online.

According to a recent report by Reuters, the Chinese National Radio and Television Administration has issued an order to livestreaming services to disallow children under the age of 18 from being able to tip to livestreamers without the permission of a guardian. Additionally, the platforms will be forcibly made unavailable after 10pm for underage viewers.

Its not clear how exactly these rules will be implemented or enforced. But thats for the various livestreaming services in China to determine, we suppose. While not commonly recognized in western nations, the biggest platforms that will have to acclimate these rulings include Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Huya and Douyu.

This is only the most recent in a wave of restrictions the Chinese government has made over the last few years regarding gaming and livestreaming. This includes banning children under 16 from registering to be a livestreamer, along with limiting video game time to 3 hours a week, divided evenly between the weekend and Fridays.

We wont act like some kids dont play too much video games, or watch too many live streams. There are plenty of people, kids and adults alike, that have that problem. But even so, these restrictions seem a touch excessive in our opinions. Playing too many video games, staying up late to watch a live stream, these were aspects of my youth that I look back on fondly. It didnt make me less of a productive member of society. I still socialized, went out, saw movies, all that. And I was able to play far more than 3 hours of video games a week while doing it.