In march 2011, one high school students who had trouble with his parents because of internet game committed suicide when he had a high school entrance ceremony. This is just one of many examples. In Korea, it is a serious problem that every year the rate of adolescent's game addiction and the accidents caused by adolescents who are addicted to game are increased. According to Wee Center research, 57% korean teenagers do internet game while other countries like taiwan and singapore have 18.1% and 4% of students who do internet game. Thus the government thought they have to prevent game addiction of those adolescents by regulating them from doing computer game at night, and made a law called 'shutdown law'. However, this law makes a lot of arguments. Some people say it is good and others say it just worse the situation, and in my opinion shutdown law isn't a good way to prevent teeangers from game addicton for those reasons.
Then, now I'll explain what is the exact standard of game addction, what is the 'shutdown law' exactly and what are the impacts of this law that cause a lot of arguments. According to Kim Tae-hoon, a psychiatrist who treats teenagers, "Internet addiction" may not be recognized as a medical condition or psychiatric disorder, but it often serves as a symptom of more serious underlying mental disorders such as attention deficit disorder and depression. As he said, the game addiction is kind of a symptom. Thus it is too ambiguous to say what is game addiction or not, but in this case I'll say game addiction persons are the people who are talked by experts that they are addicted to game.
In korea, there are a lot of those teenagers who are addicted to game. According to Eo Gee-jun, president of the Korea Computer Life Institute, out of 10 adults and some 26 percent of teenagers are addicted gamers. Therefore to prevent those adolescents from serious game addiction, the government made a law called 'shutdown law' which is often called 'cinderella law'. The 'Shutdown (System) Law' currently refers to Article 26 (Article 23.3 before the amendment) of the Juvenile Protection Act which forbids internet game services providers from (knowingly) providing gaming services to juveniles younger than 16, from midnight to 06:00. This is why the law is sometimes called the 'Cinderella Law.' The law was first enacted in 2011, shortly before the complaint was filed. Starting from 2012, the punishments kicked in. Such a violation is a crime. The maximum punishment for (knowingly) providing online gaming to a juvenile (during 00:00 – 06:00) is imprisonment for 2 years or a fine of 10,000,000 won(.
After that law enforced, there are many effects and differences before the law made. Of course, children who are younger that 16 cannot do game from midnight to 06:00, and in some case it can protect them from game addiction. However, many effects appeared in other aspects. Many game developers and companies were worried that it could affect to game industry, badly. Also most of experts say that children try to find another way to do computer game. Thus now I'm going to explain why that 'shutdown law' is not a good way to prevent children from game addiction.
Shutdown law is not an efficient way to prevent children from game addiction, even though the purpose is to prevent them from game addiction. For instance, many kids log into an account owned by their parents or another adult (Maemi, 2012). Less "privileged" minors simply utilize the lockdown period to fire up offline games. Many experts said about this situation. According to the game developer JongDeuk Kim, who recorded no change in the number of concurrent users for both youth and adult age ranges - again, because youngsters just hop on their parent's account. Also, KiMin Yang, a researcher of Cultural Society Institute, acknowledged the futility of the existing law and believed new anti-addiction methods should be explored. She said "Restriction and care are totally different. We need to show the conservative groups that we are protecting the youth in different ways, not neglecting them" As they said like that, shutdown law has no efficient effect that can reduce the number of children who are addicted to game. That law is just a 'nominal law' that the government just trying to show people that they do something for the problem. The evidences that shutdown law is unnecessary in Korea and just nominal law are more exist.
Because of the Shutdown law, the game industry can affect. In fact, shutdown is equal to kill the Korea game industry, which is the most biggest game industry in the world. Many experts predict that shutdown law could increase the money that the game companies have to spend for shutdown law to make a program or something prevent children from accessing, even though it does not affect the exact user number of the game. No immediate effect on online game companies here is expected. When taking into consideration that those aged 18 or under account for 28.9 percent of online gamers those aged under 16 represent less than 20 percent. The number of those in the age group playing between midnight and 6 a.m. will be even less, said Jung Woo-chul, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities. He said that the average revenue per user (ARPU) of online gamers was 25,160 won a month last year, while it stood at only 6,794 won for those aged under 14. 'Players of major games are in their 30s. The age of online gamers is rising fast,' he added. Online game giant NCsoft’s main games are Lineage and Lineage II. As it has been 13 years since the launch of Lineage and eight for Lineage II most players are over 16. However, he said that the move will increase management costs for game companies, they will have to shoulder the expense of the shutdown system. and they will have to increase servers to store personal information, check users aren’t stealing someone else’s identification and strengthen security.
Also, on top of criticism in the local market, businesses fear that the shutdown will hamper the export of games, as it may encourage the idea abroad that Korean games are harmful.
One of the economical analyst(KB Investment & Securities) Choi Hoon said , Instead of enforcing the regulation, it would have been better if the government had devised other ways to modify the current situation for teenagers who immerse themselves in online games rather than other leisure activities.
Thus as I explained before, we need to find other efficient way to prevent children from game addiction, not affecting game industry by enforcing a lot of money to game companies to make such programs and by making a bad image to game itself caused problem for exporting the game.
However, the supporters of shutdown law might say that the most important thing is not money, game industry, efficiency of it and etc, but the little result that shutdown law prevent some children from game addiction, and they are especially parents. “Game companies are concerned about the damage following the shutdown, but frankly, as a mom, I do think that it is necessary. I don’t understand why game companies are so strongly opposing the shutdown for midnight till 6 a.m, when children are supposed to be sleeping,” said a blogger, who introduced herself as a full time housewife with two children. Alliance for Love of Children, an NGO, also welcomed the approval of the bill. “We are sorry that it set the age limit at 16 instead of 19, and that it gave a two year grace period on mobile games,” the NGO said in an announcement. “Restricting children and teenagers to a limited connection to network games at night comes not out of a restriction on the game industry. It is the basic right of children to sleep. We have made an effort to change excessive internet game surroundings, but the passage of the revision bill was delayed due to lobbying by game companies. We are sorry that many children have been affected by game addiction” (Yoon Ja-young, 2014).
Nevertheless, we have to realize that the reason that children are addicted to game is not a game itself. The most common things from children who are addicted to game are that their parents don't have much time to take care of them. Educators and game industry advocates also contended that addictive behavior was more the symptom of cultural problems than the fault of games. Students don't have much free time in the country, and they frequently use games to cope with school-related stress. As previous studies have suggested, addiction is more likely to reflect existing mental health issues than spring from the games themselves. Outside of that, parental influence is a key factor. A broken home, or parents who just don't understand gaming, may lead to imbalanced children who don't know when to stop playing and start interacting with other people. Thus, there are no reason to affect game industry badly and there are more efficient way to prevent children from game addiction by making children's culture more healthy.
As you already know, the Korea has one of the most powerful internet game industry. This is good part of our nation that almost 73 percent of people are allowed to use internet and game. However, there are a lot of side effects of it. Because of internet game, a lot of children whose parents don't have enough time to take care of them are addicted to game and the rate of children's game addiction are growing every year. Thus it became not just personal problem, but who nation's problem, and the government try to do something for it so they made a law 'shutdown law' which regulate under 16 years old children to play game from midnight to 6:00 A.M, and that makes a lot of arguments. Many experts say that that law does not have a powerful result to children's game addiction, and it will impact the game industry because of the cost it makes to the game companies and the bad images to game that could cause the bad affects to export. However, some people say that it is better than doing nothing and children must sleep at night so there are no problem to shutdown law, but many experts say that the problem is not the game itself, but the culture. Therefore we have to find another efficient way to prevent those children from game addiction. Not just nominal law, but real effective law that considered carefully so everyone cannot effect badly. Then, I‘m sure that we can make a bright future of our nations.
References.
SANGWON YOON(06,22,2010). Internet Addiction Targeted In South Korea
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/22/internet-addiction-target_n_547747.html
Sa Youn Hwang (
