Mobile games on display at the ChinaJoy 2014 event.
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China’s education ministry moves to curtail screen time for games to prevent myopia

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

China’s Ministry of Education issued a notice on Thursday aimed at preventing myopia, or nearsightedness, among children and adolescents by limiting the screen time for mobile devices, PCs, and consoles, according to market researcher Niko Partners.

The aim is to reduce the myopia rate among kids and teens by more than 5 percentage points through 2023. That means enacting restrictions on usage of electronic devices by kids and teens at home and school. And that means that regulations are likely coming that will limit the amount of time that minors can play games online. It could also mean that China will limit the number of games that it will approve for release.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.