Shielding builders of tomorrow from the dark side of the net

Since the beginning of this year, relevant departments have introduced a series of measures to protect the physical and mental health of minors, banning them from giving rewards to livestreaming anchors and guiding major platforms to launch a youth model, thus protecting minors' legitimate rights and interests in cyberspace.

How to ensure minors enjoy the benefits of the internet while building for them a protective barrier needs the efforts of the whole society. Improving laws and regulations, strengthening network governance, and punishing those misusing the internet to infringe on children's legitimate rights will play a fundamental role in promoting the healthy development of minors.

By and large, children become addicted to the internet for want of interesting alternatives. Therefore, providing children with better content, more choices and better care and companionship, online or offline, can help promote their healthy development.

From listing labor as a compulsory education course, and increasing labor practice in and out of class, to putting more emphasis on physical education and improving after-class service quality, a series of measures taken in the past year have helped children focus more on balancing studies and life.

With steady progress in China's policy to relieve the students' learning burden, which banned for-profit "subject-based" after-school training programs, children's studying burden has been greatly reduced, but it is now critical to ensure the spare time is not devoted to short videos, online chat, online games.

Parents as children's first teachers have a subtle influence on them. A study by the China Youth and Children Research Center shows that children use social media more often if other members of the family surf the internet and there is a lack of mutual communication. The Family Education Promotion Law, which took effect on Jan 1, stipulates that parents or other guardians should properly arrange minors' time for study, rest, entertainment and physical exercise to check internet addiction. This indicates that it is parents' responsibility to create a healthy atmosphere for children.

Young people are the future and hope of their families, but more importantly, of their country.

By giving priority to children and establishing a sound mechanism of coordinated education between school, family and society, we will better protect children's rights, raise their overall quality, and train them to be socialist builders who are well developed morally, intellectually and physically.