Sina Weibo to impose age restriction for minors under 14

World
Europe

Sina Weibo's new age-restriction policy has drawn widespread attention online since it was announced on Tuesday.

As China's equivalent of Twitter, the popular social media platform announced that users under the age of 14 will no longer be available to register on its platform starting next month.

Weibo's operator released a statement on Tuesday, announcing that users under the age of 14 will no longer be available to register on the platform starting next month. /Screenshot of Weibo

The moves are aimed at creating a “clean, healthy civilized and organized” online environment to protect the cybersecurity of minors, according to the statement released by Weibo's operator.

The operator also said that they are currently developing a special version of the platform for minors, providing them with age-appropriate content, according to the statement.

“We've always attached great importance to protecting minors and never stopped creating a better online environment for minors,” Weibo said in the statement. “We welcome all users to supervise us and work together with us to build a safer and cleaner platform.”

However, the operator didn't mention whether current users under the age of 14 will be affected by the new policy.

VCG Photo

As the Internet gradually becomes an indispensable part of people's lives, more and more minors are going online at an early age.

According to a newly released report on the Chinese minors' use of Internet over the past year, about 98.1 percent of minors can fully get access to the Internet. Nearly 72 percent minors under the age of 10 have already been able to get access to the Internet, a 55.9-percent increase compared with the percentage in 2010.

More than 90 percent of minors have been exposed to inappropriate content online, mainly through commercials, videos and games, according to the People's Daily citing another report.

In 2011, Weibo started to ask new users to register accounts with their real names, and demanded all of its users to verify their accounts with real names last September.

Last month, Weibo also released a new policy to control verbal harassment on its platform. Users will be banned from leaving comments for three days after their comments are deleted or their accounts are blacklisted by another user who has over 100,000 followers.

Sina Weibo, one of China's most popular social media platforms, was publicly launched in 2009. By June, it had over 431 million active users per month, 93 percent of who used mobile devices to access the platform.