[Rule of law protects my heart]

　　 Author: Associate Professor of Law School of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Deputy Director of Research Base of Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Center Zhao Jingwu

Recently, the State Council reviewed and passed the Regulations on the Protection of Minors' Networks (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"), which will come into force on January 1, 2024. This not only means the further improvement of the legislative system of cyberspace governance in China, but also marks the completion of the system of minors' protection in the network field, which effectively responds to the attention of all sectors of society on the protection of minors' personal information, prevention of addiction to the Internet, and rewards of live webcasts and other practical issues.

In the era of digital economy, the Internet has changed the social operation mode, and also changed the growth environment of minors. Efficient information dissemination, diversified information services, and a broad perspective of observation enable minors to understand humanities, history, scientific and technological information and other aspects of knowledge content at home, and assist minors to better cultivate independent learning. However, the openness of the Internet also makes some minors lost in cyberspace. In addition to the problems of Internet addiction in the past, participation in online violence, excessive online consumption and other phenomena also erode minors' unformed world outlook and outlook on life. Therefore, the deliberation and adoption of the regulations is precisely to guide minors to access the Internet reasonably and scientifically.

In this regulation, the social co governance model of minors' network protection is innovatively proposed. All parties involved from regulatory agencies, enterprises, colleges and even industry associations, social organizations, parents, etc. to the healthy growth of minors should participate in it, and everything should be based on the fundamental principle of "most beneficial to minors". First, at the level of online trust supervision, online trust, education, telecommunications, public security, civil affairs, culture and tourism, health and other departments will coordinate and participate in the network protection of minors, and create an all-round and multi-dimensional network environment suitable for the healthy growth of minors. Second, at the level of social organizations, trade unions, the Communist Youth League, women's federations and other people's and mass organizations will give full play to the function of industry guidance and grass-roots autonomy to assist in the implementation of the regulations. Third, at the level of educational institutions and families, in addition to the need for colleges and educational institutions to continuously guide minors to establish a correct concept of Internet access, parents are also required to prevent and intervene in minors' addiction to the Internet. Because family education is also the key link of scientific, civilized, safe and reasonable use of the network for minors, we cannot simply throw all the responsibilities to schools and teachers at the same time. Fourth, at the enterprise level, whether it is network service providers, personal information processors, or intelligent terminal equipment manufacturers and sellers, they should not only cooperate with the regulatory authorities to implement relevant supervision and inspection work, but also bear social responsibility, taking the protection of minors as a key compliance issue in product or service R&D and sales.

The regulation not only includes the special protection rules for minors' personal information, but also focuses on new negative online activities such as online violence and online bullying. It is shown in the following aspects:

First, network literacy first and innovative education curriculum. In the network work of minors, the most important thing is to improve the network literacy of minors and guide them to clearly distinguish between bad information and illegal information on the network. The regulation authorizes the education institutions of the State Council and the network information department to jointly formulate the evaluation indicators of minors' network literacy, and takes network literacy as an important assessment content of national quality education. On the one hand, schools, libraries, youth palaces and other places need to ensure a good online environment, cultivate students' awareness of network security, and guide students to use the network for independent learning; On the other hand, enterprises, including equipment manufacturers, need to ensure that their products or services have the basic function of identifying illegal information and bad information, and encourage and support enterprises to develop and apply functional modules such as youth mode and juvenile zone.

Second, reject cyber bullying and prevent cyber addiction. In the face of the information explosion on the Internet, it is necessary for all sectors of society to build a good network information filter screen to screen out all kinds of bad information and illegal information. In particular, under the trend of increasing cyber violence, in order to prevent minors from being subjected to cyber bullying, this regulation prohibits any organization or individual from publishing any form of insult, slander, threat or malicious damage to minors on the Internet. In addition, the regulation explicitly prohibits the insertion and push of "online game links" and "advertising unrelated to teaching" in the case of some bad businesses inserting advertising and other bad information in applications or smart products related to minors' education. In addition, in order to prevent minors from indulging in the Internet and consuming excessively, the regulation also adopts functional modules such as "limiting the accumulated consumption amount in a single day", "limiting the consumption amount in a single time", "prohibiting the help response list". In order to implement the actual effect of these functional modules, the regulation takes "identity verification" as a mandatory link, Internet information service providers are required to strictly implement the real name registration system for minors, and cooperate with the unified electronic identity authentication system for minors online games and other mechanisms to prevent minors from indulging in online games.

Third, special protection of personal information, unnecessary collection and processing. At this stage, another thorny problem in the network protection of minors is the protection of their personal information. The leakage and abuse of such sensitive personal information not only infringes the minors' personal information rights, but also easily leads to network bullying, human flesh search and other malignant events that are not conducive to the growth of minors. The regulations separate the "personal information protection" into a chapter. On the basis of the Personal Information Protection Law on the protection of sensitive personal information, it emphasizes the necessity of personal information processors to collect and process personal information of minors, and needs to meet the two conditions of "specific purpose" and "sufficient necessity", with the "minimum authorization principle" as the standard, Limit the scope of staff who can access such information to prevent internal employees from disclosing information. It is worth noting that the regulations strengthen the guardianship responsibilities of parents, and urge parents and other guardians to effectively protect minors' personal information rights in the form of obligatory clauses.

To sum up, the adoption of the regulations marks a new stage of social co governance for China's minors' network protection, which conforms to the basic goals of China's cyberspace governance, shapes a positive and healthy network environment, and helps minors improve their network literacy and information technology literacy.