A teenager in China who developed a chronic habit for an online gambling game and spent his family’s entire 200,000-yuan (US$28,000) savings on it has highlighted the problem of adolescent internet addiction in the country.
In March, a man in central China’s Henan province sought help from a local television programme, Xiaoli to the Rescue, to retrieve his savings.
The man, surnamed Cheng, said his 15-year-old son had gambled family money, including 30,000 yuan in salaries and the 170,000-yuan bride price received from his daughter’s newlywed husband, on a lottery game in the short video app Kuaishou.
Bride price is a traditional Chinese wedding custom in which the groom’s family pays the bride’s family a large sum of money.
The boy admitted he had lost all the money in just three months, after becoming hooked on the game.
The game, which features a lottery ball and costs 100 yuan a go, could yield up to 20,000 yuan for winners, according to advertising for it.
Cheng junior said he initially topped up just a few hundred yuan, and the more he played the more he spent, and ended up topping up 150,000 yuan into the game and losing all of it.
He squandered the rest of the money on food and entertainment.
His Kuaishou account was connected to his father’s bank account, and he knew the password.
Cheng senior said he was heartbroken as that was all the money the family had, and he could not make more money as he broke both legs in an accident at work last year.
Cheng junior’s mother had passed away.
His sister, who had married and given all her bride price money to her father, said the cash was intended for her brother to buy a house and marry in the future.
A reporter on the Xiaoli to the Rescue programme helped the family call Kuaishou customer service.
A member of staff told them it might be possible to refund money spent by minors without the guardian’s supervision.
They were also told that the app did not limit Cheng’s spending because it “did not know if he was an adult or a minor”.
Cheng junior’s case reflected a problem with such apps, which lack effective measures to protect adolescents from internet addiction and online scams.
Kuaishou does have a “teenager mode” function, which limits daily usage to less than 40 minutes and bans “consuming behaviour”, but it also allows users to turn the mode on and off.
China has 191 million underage internet users, with the penetration rate among minors reaching 96.8 per cent.
About 62.3 per cent often play online games, according to a 2021 report by the Department of Youth Rights and Welfare of the Communist Youth League Central Committee and the China internet Network Information Centre.
