It is strictly forbidden for minors to serve as anchors and live online
Hype "net celebrity children" has a huge impact on the values of minors, experts suggest the introduction of regulations
Editor's note
In recent years, with the rapid development of the Internet, the scale of underage Internet users has continued to expand, and the Internet has had a significant impact on the study, life, and behavior habits of minors.
During the summer vacation, minors often have more opportunities to access the Internet and spend more time online.
It is the common responsibility of all sectors of society to create a good network environment for minors and protect their legitimate rights and interests.
Starting today, the "Rule of Law Jingwei" edition has launched a series of reports on the "Rule of Law Guarantees the Health of Minors Going Online in Summer Vacation", exposing prominent online problems that endanger the physical and mental health of minors, exploring ways to rectify the Internet-related chaos of minors in accordance with the law, and helping Minors create a civilized, healthy and progressive network environment.
stay tuned.
□ Our reporter Chen Lei
□ Our newspaper trainee reporter Sun Tianjiao
"The ideal life of our children is to share an apartment with a few good brothers when they grow up, watch videos during the day, play games at night, order takeaways, and collect couriers." Ms. Wang, who lives in Wangjing, Chaoyang District, Beijing, said helplessly. Her son, Xiao Yang, is in the second year of the junior high school this year. His "ideal life" stems from an "Internet celebrity" anchor he is following.
"These'net celebrity' anchors give children an illusion. In fact, there is no life for nothing!" Ms. Wang said.
In recent years, with the rapid development of live broadcast and short video platforms, some minors have joined the online live broadcast team. Some of them play online games, some perform talents, some play sitcoms with adults, and some even To attract fans by selling obediently and pretending to be ugly, some of them have become "net celebrity children" with more than one million fans.
How to treat this phenomenon?
In an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily, a number of legal experts pointed out that according to the Juvenile Protection Law and other legal regulations, minors under the age of 16 acting as anchors to live live or hyping "Internet celebrity children" are all violations of laws and regulations. We should increase efforts to rectify this phenomenon and protect the legitimate rights and interests of minors.
Internet celebrity children are frequently imitated
Take measures to actively intervene
Ms. Wang told reporters that Xiao Yang's first contact with the mobile phone to surf the Internet was in the fifth grade of elementary school.
At that time, in order to let her son learn English, Ms. Wang downloaded a small program on her mobile phone and asked him to check in every day.
What caught Ms. Wang off guard was that Xiao Yang quickly became obsessed with the live webcast-sometimes, Ms. Wang didn't take her phone back in time when she was busy. Xiao Yang somehow caught the short video and online game live broadcast on her phone, and quickly became immersed in it. .
In May of this year, the reporter participated in an event with Ms. Wang, and Xiao Yang was also there.
The reporter noticed that during the interval of the event, Xiao Yang couldn't wait to grab the mobile phone from Ms. Wang and start streaming the game.
In order to stop Xiao Yang from playing the game live broadcast, Ms. Wang has had many disputes with her son.
On the afternoon of July 23, during an interview with reporters, Ms. Wang clicked on a live playback video on her mobile phone to show reporters.
In the video, the immature-looking anchor is playing the game while explaining, with excitement and some swear words.
Ms. Wang told reporters that these network anchors who are the same age as Xiao Yang usually post some videos of eating, drinking and having fun. The message to Xiao Yang is: life is playing games, eating, drinking and having fun.
"Real life is distorted by these live webcasts." Ms. Wang was very worried.
Such live videos of minors are not uncommon, and some watch and likes are very large.
A reporter searched for live playback videos on a certain online platform and saw that live broadcasts of minors and “Internet celebrity children” are everywhere: a teenage girl sings English songs. The video has been viewed 13.6 million times, with more than likes. 1 million times; an 11-year-old "Internet celebrity child" broadcasted her daily life. Her mother appeared on the camera and said that the child was scolded as "garbage" by classmates in school, and the video was viewed 246,000 times.
What's more, in some videos, minors are dressed in fancy clothes, say pleasant things, and make actions that are not suitable for their age.
These videos are broadcast on demand or reposted in large numbers.
In response to this phenomenon, the Central Cyberspace Administration of China recently launched a special action "Clearness · Summer Youth Network Environment Rectification", focusing on solving 7 types of prominent online problems that endanger the physical and mental health of minors, the first of which is live broadcasts and short videos. The platform involves minor issues.
Zhi Zhenfeng, a researcher at the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and editor-in-chief of the Blue Book of Internet Law, said that in the Internet era, the threshold and cost of access to the Internet have been greatly reduced, coupled with the rapid development of live broadcast and short video platforms, and minors live and shoot short videos. The video phenomenon is becoming more and more common. There are phenomena such as "Internet celebrity children" live show off their wealth and worship money, and extravagant enjoyment, which has caused a huge impact on the values of minors who touched the Internet.
"Minors are the future of the country. Because their physical and psychological development is not mature enough, and their social experience is not rich enough, they should be protected to the maximum extent." Zhi Zhenfeng said. "Live broadcasts are strictly prohibited for minors under the age of 16 to appear on the live broadcast. The purpose is to build a "fence" for minors who touch the Internet to prevent them from being infringed on the Internet and provide them with a higher level of legal protection.
High rate of minors' access to the Internet
Cyber hazards should not be underestimated
The phenomenon of minors’ live webcasts and hype about “Internet celebrity children” has gradually aroused the attention of the society.
Such as the "14-year-old underage pregnant mother" incident more than 3 years ago.
On an online platform, some netizens posted screenshots of videos of underage women sharing their pregnancy. One of the anchors claimed that he was only 14 years old and "the baby will be born in 62 days."
The incident immediately sparked public debate.
After netizens reported, the online platform deleted the relevant content.
However, in the following years, minors appeared more and more on major video and live broadcast platforms, and there were not a few "Internet celebrities" with millions or tens of millions of fans.
In April and May 2020, after a 13-year-old boy from Heilongjiang registered an account on an online platform, he posted a large number of videos imitating teachers, attracting many netizens to watch, and soon gained millions of fans.
In August of the same year, a 3-year-old girl was fed excessive food by her parents during the live broadcast, causing her weight to increase to 70 kg. After this matter caused widespread concern, the live broadcast account was blocked by the platform.
Live broadcasts of minors, some in the name of talent shows, are actually ugly; some set up live broadcasts of beauty, claiming that they can make a lot of money, and a series of grandstanding behaviors have triggered concerns from all walks of life about the protection of minors' rights.
Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the School of Cultural Industry Management of Communication University of China, pointed out that my country’s minors have a high rate of access to the Internet and are getting younger and younger. The harm of the Internet to minors cannot be ignored.
According to the National Research Report on Internet Usage by Minors in 2020, my country will reach 183 million underage Internet users in 2020.
More than one-third of elementary school students began to use the Internet before school age, and the trend is increasing year by year. With the development of the digital age, children are getting younger and younger when they first touch the Internet.
In Zheng Ning’s view, because some “net celebrity children” are more capable of “sucking money” than adults, some parents treat minors as money-making tools and let the children perform in accordance with written scripts, creating the illusion of being cute and overdrawing. Their physical energy, or leaking the children's personal information, or even letting the children do illegal things "bo eyeballs" can cause great harm to the children's physical and mental health, and also affect their studies.
The platform clarifies the main responsibility
The government increases supervision
The problem of minors involving live broadcast and short video platforms has become increasingly serious, and national supervision and legislative norms have been put on the agenda.
On October 1, 2019, the "Regulations on the Online Protection of Children's Personal Information" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") promulgated by the National Internet Information Office was officially implemented.
This is my country's first online protection specification specifically for children.
The "Regulations" clarify that network information content producers must not produce, copy, or publish illegal information that "may cause minors to imitate unsafe behaviors, violate social ethics, induce minors' bad habits, etc.".
In November 2020, the State Administration of Radio and Television issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of Online Show Live and E-commerce Live Broadcasting", which specifically stipulates that platforms must pass real-name verification, face recognition, and manual review to ensure that the real-name system is implemented. , Ban the reward function of underage users.
The Law on the Protection of Minors that came into effect on June 1 this year clearly stipulates that "webcast service providers shall not provide webcast publisher account registration services for minors under the age of 16."
On the same day, the Network Performance (Live Broadcast) Branch of the China Performance Industry Association released the Action Initiative for the Protection of Minors in the Network Performance (Live Broadcast) Industry.
Among them, more than 50 platforms promised not to provide webcast services for minors under 16 years of age.
Since July 23, reporters have logged on to many well-known live webcast platforms for many times and found that the platforms have implemented relevant restrictions and failed to see live videos clearly marked as minors.
For example, on Taobao, there are no minors in the live broadcasts of many children's clothing and children's toy stores.
The reporter randomly clicked on a live broadcast and saw that a message popped up in the lower left corner: "Welcome to the live broadcast room! Taobao live broadcasts strictly forbid minors to start broadcasting; it is forbidden for anchors to induce minors to consume; in the live broadcast room, violations of laws and regulations are strictly prohibited. , Vulgar and pornographic content, please report it in time if you find it."
However, on some short video platforms, there is still the phenomenon of hype about "Internet celebrity children".
For example, on a certain platform, there is a short video featuring "Dragon and Phoenix Tire", the video posting account has 14.193 million fans, and the short video posted has received 190 million likes in total.
The reporter browsed and found that the so-called "dragon and phoenix fetuses" were actually girls.
This account is certified as a popular video creator by the platform, and the cooperation WeChat account is directly given in the personal profile, and it is marked "Business account, fans are forbidden to add".
On these short video platforms, the reporters randomly searched and used platform recommendations and other methods to find a total of 17 accounts focusing on short videos of minors, of which 23.428 million had the largest number of followers.
Some short video bloggers will embed advertising products in short videos.
For example, on a certain platform, a "Internet celebrity children" account has 5.212 million fans, and his profile shows his age as 10 years old.
The top piece of work was published on July 17, and the content was that the child came up from the swimming pool after swimming, and his mother rewarded him with a candy of a certain brand.
As of July 27, this short video has been praised 15,000 times.
Zhi Zhenfeng believes that the revision of the Law on the Protection of Minors and other laws, the formulation of the "Regulations on the Protection of Children's Personal Information Online" and the "Regulations on the Ecological Governance of Online Information Content" have initiated a special action for the Central Cyberspace Administration to investigate and punish the hype "Internet celebrity children". The behavior provides a sufficient basis, and also provides a legal guarantee for protecting minors from cyber infringement.
Zhi Zhenfeng suggested that the regulations on the protection of minors' network should be promulgated as soon as possible, and provisions such as "It is strictly forbidden for minors to act as anchors on live broadcasts" are included to make the legal provisions more clear and specific.
Zheng Ning suggested that laws and related regulations should be implemented as soon as possible to clarify the main responsibilities that network service platforms must fulfill; regulatory authorities must strengthen supervision, crack down on illegal acts, and publish typical cases as warnings; schools must strengthen parents and students Education to improve their legal literacy and network literacy; industry associations must improve their self-discipline mechanism and strengthen governance through the "blacklist" of network anchors.
Cartography/Li Xiaojun