Suitable for All Ages? [Part 2]

Part One of this article considered draft Measures that purported to clarify the scope of content that is potentially harmful to minors. This article considers the finalized version of those measures.

The category of information that “might impact minors’ physical or psychological health” (potentially harmful to minors, PHM) was introduced in 2021’s revised Law on the Protection of Minors, but was not formally defined until now.

Content identified as PHM must be limited to avoid minors’ engagement with it, which incidentally impacts adults’ contact with it as well. Online platforms, game designers, users, and parents have obligations to protect minors from PHM content by labeling it, not placing it in prominent areas, and not sending it to minors or including it in content aimed at minors.

These requirements are recited in the new draft’s articles 7-9. Article 8 provides specific methods of labeling different types of media, drawing on measures for labeling AI-generated content.

Defining the scope of PHM content

Article 2 of the new Measures provides the basic definition of PHM content, while articles 3-6 elaborate with examples of specific content for different categories of PHM.

As noted in Part I, however, the categories of articles 3-6 do not exactly line up with the definition. This is likely just sloppy drafting, but it means that the Article 3-6 examples are left dangling, and are not directly addressing the Article 2 definition.

Table 1 compares the substance of Article 2’s definition with the categories elaborated in Articles 3-6. A final category from the Draft “inducements to addiction”, previously at article 7, was deleted entirely from the final version of the Measures.

The Article 5 and 6 categories (in yellow in Table 1) are disconnected from the spirit as well as the text of the definition. PHM content is generally defined in terms of the harm minors will suffer from accessing it, specifically the impact it will have on their conduct, values, and feelings. Improper use of minors’ images and disclosure of their personal information are certainly violations of minors’ rights, but their harm is not in minors’ contact with the material. Labeling such information or restricting where it is displayed doesn’t really address the harm.

One area where there was some positive change is that several of the most vague types of PHM content have been further qualified to reduce their scope. For example, content ‘creating extreme emotions’ now qualifies only if it deliberately creates an excessive or lasting state.  The table below summarizes the PHM category descriptions, highlighting changes since the revision.

Table 3: Overview of Information that Might Impact Minor’s Health in New Measures, noting redactions and additions from the earlier draft.

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