23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Poster
Family And State Intervention In Young People’s Gaming Behaviours And Its Effect On Family Relationship
Dajun Wang
university of glasgow, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Wang, Dajun
Starting from September 2021, the Chinese government has introduced an anti-addiction game policy for teenagers in mobile games, aiming to prevent youth from spending more time and money in mobile games, and expect youth to invest more energy to study and extracurricular activities, and strictly restrict youth to only play mobile games from 8 to 9 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The policy also states that relevant schools and parents should cooperate with the government’s policies Assist. However, there has not yet been a clear study to explore the understanding of the policy by youth and parents during the implementation of the policy, as well as their views and opinions on the policy. Based on the above situation, I raised several research questions:
(i) The current state of online gaming among young people, along with parental and state interventions in China.
(ii) Identification of problems and their impact on family relationships.
(iii) Exploration of potential solutions to enhance family relationships and establish an appropriate level of intervention in young people's gaming.
Also, according to Foucault's (1975) understanding of Panopticon, such surveillance makes children pay more attention to self-restraint because such surveillance is not full-time surveillance like Panopticon (1995) by Jeremy Bentham, which refers to the fragmental surveillance and this surveillance mode makes young people to be vigilant at all times to avoid intentional or unintentional surveillance or monitoring coming at any time.
When teenagers want to play mobile games, they need to consider whether their parents will see them playing games without permission, and whether these situations are allowed in the eyes of their parents. This kind of self-restraint enhanced by fragmented monitoring will gradually become automated and even become self-monitoring. And when young people know that their parents are opposed to mobile games.
However, being constantly vigilant will make the youth feel bored to a certain extent, which will also lead to the deterioration of family relationships. The anti-addiction policy was promulgated later. Although it was freed from the management of the parents, due to the parents' lack of understanding of the policy, the implementation of the policy has relatively become a decoration, and the conflicts between parents and youth regarding mobile games have gradually intensified.
In this thesis, I used this theory to find out how Chinese youth currently navigate the surveillance of parents and government policies, and what actions they take after learning about these things and how they modify or self-regulate their behaviours.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedQuestionnaire and semi-structured interview were used as the mixed method in this research to obtain data and results when discussing with young teenagers and their parents how the intervention of video games impacts the family relationship.
The questionnaire is used as the primary research method to understand the different opinions of young people and their parents. The difference in opinions inform the design of the semi-structured interview for in-depth research.
I recruited 1800 participants (900 parents+900 youths from 4th to 6th grades students)from three elementary schools in Dalian, Liaoning province, in the group of parents, there are 547 female particpants, 353 male participants； in the youth questionnaire, the number of men and women is the same.
In China, the students of these three grades are roughly 9-12 years old, which is a gap from current literature research group (Dongdong et al., 2011; van Rooij et al., 2011; Kwon et al., 2011).
I also specifically recruited children and teenagers (N = 20)who have experience in video games and balance students of different genders. By recruiting children in this research, I also interviewed their parents to understand the impact of parental control in video games.
The research had been approved by College of Social Science Ethics Committee, University of Glasgow.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings1. Limited understanding of the country's anti-addiction system, leading families to provide personal information for youth to play mobile games; despite this, most parents do not endorse youth gaming.
2. Parents resort to reasons like protecting eyesight or being busy with schoolwork to encourage youth gaming, resulting in conflicts with their children.
3. Parents often use short single-player game durations (10 minutes) to control their children’s gaming, displaying a lack of in-depth knowledge about mobile games and insufficient communication with youth.
4. The school did a poor job of promoting the Government’s anti-addiction system. Some parents do not know about the anti-addiction system (n=67) and have not even heard of it, and some youth groups do not know about the anti-addiction system(n=177), and 134 participants have not even heard of it.
Furthermore, most youths use their parents' identity to set up accounts to play mobile games, thus evading the system's identity authentication for youth groups.
Based on the results of the discussion, the suggestions that the author gives are as follows:
1. The country has relaxed specific time restrictions on mobile games.
2. The school strengthens contact with parents, builds wireless network base stations within the school, and emphasizes the issue of mobile games to parents before the holidays.
3. Parents should take the initiative to understand the content of policies for youth, and at the same time actively communicate with youth on mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices, and encourage youth to use parents’ identity information for game authentication, which will relatively increase children’s extracurricular activities. time; when problems arise, choose communication over coercive measures
4. Children should take the initiative to communicate with parents, actively share and explain their views on electronic devices, games, etc., and build a good communication environment and family atmosphere.
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