- Children under two banned from using electronic devices in Taiwan
- Parents who allow children to use iPads and smartphones face fines
- Under-18s are only allowed devices for a ‘reasonable length of time’
PUBLISHED: 09:13 GMT, 28 January 2015 | UPDATED: 07:45 GMT, 29 January 2015
Taiwan has banned children under the age of two from using electronic devices such as iPads, televisions and smartphones.
Parents who allow their young children to play with their gadgets face fines of up to £1,000, in line with a law passed last week.
The new law also states that parents must ensure that under-18s only use electronic products for a ‘reasonable’ length of time.
No more iNanny: Parents in Taiwan are now completely banned from allowing their under-twos to use any electronic devices, such as tablets, smartphones or TVs or they risk a £1,000 fine
Taiwanese lawmakers passed the new legislation last Friday, completely banning parents from allowing their under-twos to use any electronic devices, China’s official news agency Xinhua reports.
Meanwhile Taiwanese under-18s are not allowed to ‘constantly use electronic products for a period of time that is not reasonable’, although the ‘reasonable length of time’ has not been defined.
The new law means that iPads, smartphones and televisions are now listed alongside cigarettes and alcohol as restricted.
The new law was originally proposed by Taiwanese MP Lu Shiow-yen, who said his intention was to protect young people by stopping them using electronic devices for more than 30 minutes at a time, The Telegraph reports.
Research published in December last year found that 7.1 per cent of the population in Asia is addicted to the internet.
Screens off: Taiwanese under-18s are no longer allowed to ‘constantly use electronic products for a period of time that is not reasonable’ under new legislation
In neighbouring China, online addiction among young people has become a serious problem, with an estimated 24million children considered ‘web junkies’.
As well as introducing laws requiring games companies ‘to develop techniques that would limit the gaming time of minors’, more than 250 military style boot camps have been set up across China to tackle under-18 internet addiction.
Since the release of the first iPad in 2010, an ever increasing number of parents use the Apple device to ‘babysit’ their children.
A recent poll found that half of British parents routinely allow infants to play with their smartphone or tablet, and one in seven let them spend more than four hours a day on hand-held devices.
Even Prince William recently admitted to letting Prince George play games on his iPad, saying that he believes it is ‘a good way to each him the inner workings of electronics’.
Research published in the British Medical Journal found that a child born today will have spent a full year staring at screens (tablets, computers, TVs) by the time they reach seven.
