News**: The Beijing News "spent 7,000 yuan to sign up for Chongli ski camp for six days and five nights, saving him from 'seeing each other and getting tired of each other' with his old mother at home, and by the way, he can also control him to play with electronic products." Since January 20, students in the compulsory education stage in Beijing have started the "winter vacation mode", and Ms. Li, who lives in Xicheng District, Beijing, has already planned her children's winter vacation.
Send trusteeship classes, enroll in research camps, and attend training classes; Confiscation of electronic devices, internet disconnection, sports, travel ......The holiday is coming, how to prevent the "addiction" of electronic products is one of the headaches for parents, and they have also come up with various tricks to withdraw children's attention from electronic products. How to let children learn to manage the use of electronic products scientifically? Why do children can't extricate themselves from short** and online games? What are some ways to help children better manage their time during the holidays?
The game platform has launched a limited-play calendar for minors during the winter vacation
With the official implementation of the Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online on January 1, 2024, the obligations of "online platform service providers with a large number of minor users or a significant impact on minors", that is, "big platforms", have been further clarified, which also fully reflects the state's determination to build a strong barrier for the online protection of minors and strengthens the responsibility of platforms.
A few days ago, the topic Minors can only play games for 9 hours during the Spring Festival has become a hot search, causing social concern. According to the regulations, from January 22 to February 24, minors can only log in to experience the game from January 26 to 28, February 2 to 3, February 9 to 17, and February 23 to 24, with a total of 16 hours of game time. Coincidentally, NetEase Games also issued a "Winter Vacation Restriction Notice" on January 24, and minors can only play games for 9 hours during the Spring Festival holiday.
The state has long had provisions on preventing minors from indulging in online games. In 2021, the "Notice on Further Strict Management and Effectively Preventing Minors from Becoming Addicted to Online Games" was promulgated, requiring that the time for providing online gaming services to minors be strictly limited, and that all online gaming enterprises only be allowed to do so weekly.
Five, week. 6. On Sundays and statutory holidays, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily, one hour of service will be provided to minors. The notice is also known as "the strictest anti-addiction new rule in history".
At the same time, the reporter found in the interview that there are also minors who try to bypass the supervision of the platform and continue to play games by borrowing their parents' information to create accounts, or even "renting accounts". Ms. Li, a parent, revealed that it is no secret to "rent an account" among gamers, and there are many "account rental studios" on online shopping platforms, where gamers can rent accounts of different levels and different servers to play games. Ms. Xu's daughter has been using her father's ID number to play games, and it is common for children to use their parents' information to play games in her circle of friends. This also means that in the case of "limited play" of games becoming the norm, the degree of cooperation of parents is also related to whether children can really not be addicted to games.
In fact, many parents believe that what is more worrying than being addicted to games is the negative impact that the content on the major ** and short ** platforms may bring to their children. The reporter noticed that since 2019, major short ** apps have successively launched the "Youth Mode", which strictly restricts the use time, time period and use functions of teenagers. Some short ** apps will also carry out special governance for the protection of minors at special nodes such as winter and summer vacations, focusing on cracking down on illegal content related to minors such as inducing negative behavior, spreading negative culture, and disseminating negative values. This has played a certain role in preventing teenagers' short-term addiction, and has also alleviated parents' anxiety to a certain extent.
Under the "youth mode" of a well-known short ** platform, the reporter swiped ** and found that what was pushed for the children was about children's **, doing handicrafts, small experiments, cartoons, picture book reading, small animals, funny, small games and other networks**, one after another, and it was dizzying. "The short ** is to let the viewer have sensory entertainment, and let the child keep watching in a way that attracts attention, and many adults can't extricate themselves, not to mention children who have no restraint. Ms. Li, a parent, said. And Mr. Huang, a parent, believes that once children fall in love with games and small **, it will be difficult to have the energy and mind to do other things.
However, some parents said that the "youth anti-addiction system" launched on major ** platforms is not mandatory, but needs to be opened on their own initiative. I have to admit that the proportion of minors and their guardians who take the initiative to enable "minor mode" is not high, and even some parents do not know that some platforms have "minor mode".
"Lack of psychological nutrition" and other reasons make children addicted to electronic products
The brain is naturally lazy. To reverse the lazy nature of the brain is to get the brain moving. Electronic products and short** content are designed completely according to the characteristics of the brain, activating the brain and making it unstoppable. When talking about why electronic products such as short ** and games are easy to indulge in, Yang Juan, a professor at the School of Economics and Business Administration of Beijing Normal University, director of the Academic Planning Research Center, and chairman of the Family Education Professional Committee of the China Association for Private Education, explained the principle behind it.
For example, if you eat sweets such as chocolate and cakes, your brain will feel happy and will guide you to continue eating. In the same way, the short ** will make the brain more active, and the brain will direct the hand to continue to stroke the short **; The sound of the game and the constant rewards will give the brain a sense of accomplishment, and it will command people to constantly solve problems, earn game equipment and upgrades, and earn points, making it difficult to stop playing.
In the information age, children's daily life and learning cannot be completely separated from electronic products, such as the need to check learning materials, submit homework, and so on. In Yang Juan's view, it is more difficult for children to overcome electronic products than adults. The first is that adolescents have relatively weak self-control. She mentioned that the amygdala in the human brain matures around the age of 14, which is the physiological structure responsible for emotional experience, but the prefrontal layer of the brain, which is responsible for reason and control, is not yet mature. At the same time, in order to retain more users, game companies often work with psychologists and brain experts to develop games and study how to keep users in games longer. Therefore, parents need to help their children look at video games rationally and learn to control the time they spend using them.
Secondly, Yang Juan believes that the "lack of psychological nutrition" is also easy for children to extricate themselves from the virtual world provided by electronic products. "Let children grow up healthy and happy, and provide psychological supplements for children from five aspects. Yang Juan introduced that these five points are a sense of achievement, a sense of belonging, a sense of value, a sense of experience and a sense of control.
Studies have found that children with lower average grades are more likely to be addicted to mobile phones because they can gain a sense of accomplishment through mobile games; Left-behind children and other children who are not accompanied by their families are more likely to be addicted to mobile phones because of the lack of family affection or even friendship. Therefore, parents should help their children establish the meaning of learning, and use sports and travel, peer companionship, etc., to bring children a richer experience in the real world. "Especially in adolescence, junior high school students crave recognition and control, and under the strict control of their parents, some video games can give them a sense of control, so they turn to the virtual world for help. ”
Experts recommend turning play into a grip for your child's growth
Shui Linlin, a professor at the School of Animation and dean of the School of Design Thinking at Communication University of China, is a "game master" and a mother of two children. During the epidemic, she led graduate students to design a parent-child board game - "Time Demon Feeding Manual", to help teenagers in home isolation during the epidemic to do a good job in time management, deepen the mutual understanding between parents and children in parent-child games, improve the quality of parent-child companionship, and turn games into a starting point for children's growth.
In her view, the "gamification" of parents and children is the solution to many parent-child problems, which can help children effectively get rid of the shackles of electronic products while enhancing the parent-child relationship.
Gamification' is the mechanics of the game to help children grow. According to Shui Linlin, the "game mechanism" can be summarized into four points: goals, rules, timely feedback and voluntary participation, and parents can set small goals in their usual tasks. For example, many people have played the well-known game "Mario", when crossing a valley, a small bridge or a mushroom, the essence of the design is to let Mario jump. If we let the child run 800 meters, we can also design some different tasks, all of which are to let him run, then running 800 meters will become interesting.
Yang Juan gave suggestions for three types of parent-child games, namely games for intellectual development, games for emotional regulation, and games for habit formation. First of all, parents can make up stories with their children, imagine the ending and scenes of the story, and develop their language expression and thinking skills. Observe the phenomena in life together, improve the observation ability, and establish spatial thinking. Secondly, you can create social interaction with elders and peers to improve children's emotional regulation ability, "let children play with different people, feel the differences of people, even if it is quarrels and conflicts with friends, it will also exercise children's problem-solving skills." "The third type is habit-forming games, where parents can set up small tasks with rewards and take advantage of the competitive environment between parents and children to let children develop good learning habits.
Psychologists are studying the mechanisms behind game addiction so that learning can be as addictive as games. Yang Juan said that first of all, for young children, setting up learning reward coins can solve the problem of boring and tired learning; Secondly, like a game, start the learning task in small steps. "Why do children as young as 5 years old and as old as 80 years old love video games? Because the game is easy to pick up and use, it keeps leveling up along the way. Yang Juan said that from this and that, in terms of learning, you can first give children small and easy to complete learning tasks, so that children can gain a sense of achievement and have the motivation to further learn, and then further adjust the difficulty, so that children can achieve continuous improvement from "bronze" to "king", "During this period, parents should also continue to encourage their children to make him feel happy." ”
Expert support
Q: How can I help my child cope better with electronic products?
Yang Juan:Parents can manage their mobile phones and electronic devices step by step. First of all, we must not demonize and angelize electronic products, but explain the benefits of mobile phones and pads and rationalize the use of electronic products. Secondly, in the information age, intelligent technology can provide a lot of learning resources, and parents and children can objectively analyze how to make good use of electronic products. Finally, help your child explore his hobbies and hobbies, so that he can plan his own holiday life, so that he can have more decision-making power and autonomy.
Q: How can I let my child manage his or her own electronic products?
Yang Juan:In terms of mobile phone management, we should achieve "three determinations", that is, qualitative, quantitative, and positioning. Parents should first determine with their children whether the electronic devices are used for information, entertainment, or communication with classmates. Secondly, it is reasonable to fix the daily use time, two hours a day for junior high school students and three hours for high school students, and the time for online classes should be counted separately. It is also necessary to let children know that mobile phones can be used, such as during the holidays during the day and at night when they are with their parents, and leave time to play with mobile phones. Some children don't want their parents to hide their mobile phones, and they are worried that their parents will invade their privacy with their mobile phones, so they may wish to set up a locked box in the common area of the family to store their children's mobile phones to reassure them. Parents can manage themselves in a way that is acceptable to their children.
Q: It is difficult for children to implement the rules that have been formulated with great difficulty, how should parents deal with them?
Shui Linlin:The rules that parents make or negotiate for their children are very inexpensive and easy to break. When children spend time thinking about the plans they make, they have binding force on themselves, and there is a lot of resistance to breaking the rules, and the ability to take the initiative to implement them is stronger. Parents should learn to let go, let their children learn to manage themselves, and learn to review and reflect on their own planning.
Q: If parents find that their children have a tendency to be addicted to electronic products, how can they communicate effectively with their children?
Shui Linlin:Children are addicted to games because they can't solve problems in real life, and they turn to games to find an outlet. In fact, children can also be seen from the games that children love to play, parents should learn to empathize, observe children's behavior in the game to find out where the child's talent lies, and give support in reality, rather than standing far away with their hands on their waists.
Yang Juan: In parent-child communication, parents must whisper, do not roar at high decibels, parents must first control their emotions, and when they see their children playing with electronic products, they should first understand the reasons why their children play through communication.
A child mentioned to me that one day when the parents came in and saw him holding a mobile phone, they criticized him, in fact, he was helping his grandfather repair his mobile phone and delete some useless programs, and he felt very aggrieved by the parents, so don't blame the child as soon as he comes up. Parents may wish to first ** the reasons why their children play electronic products and games to try to understand their children.