For a long time, the problem of online games for minors has attracted much attention from the outside world. During the two sessions of the National people's Congress this year, Li Yan, deputy to the National people's Congress and president of Qilu Pharmaceutical Group, proposed that the ban on the provision of online game services be included in the Law on the Protection of minors, and severely crack down on enterprises and platforms that provide online game services to minors; increase the supervision and punishment of game operators and platform service providers that provide online game services to minors, and resolutely withdraw once found.

Completely stopping the provision of online game services to minors can indeed completely close the link between minors and games, but it will also bring some consequences. First of all, it completely deprives young people of their entertainment, learning and social needs through games. Secondly, as an emerging industry, games are closely related to the research and development and application of all kinds of new technologies, such as AR, meta-universe, 5G and other technologies. Games are all important application scenarios. Third, game development and operation have formed a huge industrial cluster, and the game industry is related to huge economic output and jobs. Fourth, e-sports industry is regarded as an important youth sports event, which is already an important part of cultural output. Thus it can be seen that turning off the service channel of online games for minors is suspected of being one-size-fits-all. After all, the key to underage use of online game services is to use them in a moderate and reasonable manner.

According to the 2021 National Research report on the Internet use of minors jointly released by the Ministry of Youth Rights Protection of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the China Internet Network Information Center, the number of underage Internet users in China reached 191 million in 2021. The Internet penetration rate of minors reached 96.8%, an increase of 1.9 percentage points over 2020 (94.9%). This means that minors "touch the net" has become a common phenomenon, mobile phones, computers, the Internet have become necessary equipment in the national home. In an era where the network is ubiquitous, it may be difficult to achieve the use of online games for minors.

It should be pointed out that the construction of a more perfect management and protection mechanism of minors touching the network is a necessary move based on the characteristics of minors, such as immature body and mind, weak self-control and so on. In recent years, the state has issued documents to constantly limit the length of time for the game platform to provide services to minors. At present, all game platforms can only provide one-hour service to minors from 20:00 to 21:00 on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays, and online game services are not allowed to minors at any other time.

However, there are still many secret doors for minors to use online games. Logging in with adult accounts, playing games overtime and high recharge are important problems for minors to use online game services. Some game platforms are not strict enough for user identity verification, and minors can easily pass by borrowing adult identity cards. On the second-hand trading platform, sellers offer services for selling or renting "real-name certified game accounts", saying that the accounts are bound to adult ID cards, thus bypassing the anti-addiction mode. In addition, some games can be logged in directly through Wechat, QQ or other third-party platform accounts bound to the phone, but the game platform lacks secondary verification, resulting in their vulnerabilities being exploited.

In terms of "krypton gold", there are also many loopholes. There are a large number of game charging services on some e-commerce, social platforms and APP, and sellers also use discounts and rebates to induce minors to charge more quickly. The game platform does not set an upper limit on the value of props and coupon red packets given to minors by other players, so that minors can borrow this model to get a large number of "gifts" and easily break through the recharge limit.

All these reflect that there are still deficiencies in the protection of minors in the current field of online games. Constantly improving the regulatory mechanism and compacting the responsibility of the platform should become the test standard for the construction of online game protection system for minors. Some experts and users suggest that face recognition should be carried out for users to play games and recharge, provide a more comprehensive way to verify user information, and reduce the operating space such as recharge. this mode is worth exploring.

In addition, as suggested by CPPCC National Committee member Li Yan, the software for parents' monitoring and network management of mobile phones, computers, learning machines, and other terminal devices can be forced to be installed in advance. This measure can be applied to the "youth version" of the game, which is beneficial for parents to check the actual situation of their children's use of online games in real time or on a regular basis, and intervene as soon as possible.

E-commerce platforms and social platforms should also strengthen the supervision of merchants selling charging services to minors and account registration cheating services, set up one-button reporting services, and deal with related problems provided by netizens, it is necessary to carry out accountability treatment, including sealing names, within a specified period of time, and make it public.

E-commerce platforms and social platforms should also strengthen the supervision of merchants selling charging services to minors and account registration cheating services, set up one-button reporting services, and deal with related problems provided by netizens, it is necessary to carry out accountability treatment, including sealing names, within a specified period of time, and make it public.

Bi Jie, a financial commentator