In South Korea, online gaming addiction in young children is reaching high enough levels and apparently doing enough "harm" that the government is trying to do something about it. Just over a month ago, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Ministry of Gender Equality (MGEF) introduced the "Shutdown Law", also known as the "Cinderella Law" which forbids children under 16 from playing online games between midnight and 6am. Unsurprisingly, the kids are not too keen on this brand new restriction of their gaming fix. However, in a move that will surprise no-one (well hopefully, anyway) the kids do what kids do best and are either outright ignoring it or finding workarounds. This is rather easy to do, because they can do simple things such as log on using the accounts of older friends and family, or just play single player games, of which there is a huge variety available for every platform.To gauge the effectiveness of this new law, a panel commissioned by This Is Game has researched its impact and discovered that the kids are indeed widely using workarounds to these restrictions to the point where the law is having a negligible effect and is effectively a waste of time and taxpayer's money. A youth going by the nickname Maemi was interviewed, who confirmed the workarounds and also blamed the problem on there being too much study:

All of my friends and others well know about the Shutdown system. But all of them said nothing would change because we all could still either play the online games with our parents' IDs or play other games not under the policy such as console games or mobile games. This system is meaningless. Moreover I heard that the system was to guarantee our right to sleep, but we cannot sleep not because of the game but overwhelming amount of study. I honestly cannot understand why this policy exists.

So, if they have too much study to do, how can they have any time to game?

KiMin Yang, a researcher at Cultural Society Institute, acknowledged the futility of this law and believes that new anti-addiction methods should be explored instead of prohibition and that the country should try to understand its children better. So, assuming that gaming is really as harmful as the Korean government thinks, then how can anything be done to stop this, other than have parents try to make their children understand and instil some discipline into them? Good luck with that.