Falling into a vortex
At the beginning of 2026, Lao Dong reporters approached a special boarding school in Ninh Binh, where hundreds of teenage students were "retraining" after a period of game addiction and leaving home.
Among them is Khanh (he asked to hide his real name), who has been at this school for 3 years, and was brought here by his parents when he was 15 years old due to game addiction.
I started to become addicted to phones from about 9-10 years old" - Khanh said - "Social networks are more attractive than I could imagine. There are many things to learn on social networks. Sometimes, this content suddenly "jumps" onto the screen or is linked to each other. In addition, friends also invite me to join game groups. I became addicted to playing sic bo and online gambling forms. At that time, I was in 8th grade. Initially, the amount was only 20 thousand - 30 thousand VND. When I became more and more greedy and rushed in, I lost even more. The largest debt was 100 million VND.
When the debt became more and more, I borrowed money from friends, stole from my parents to pay. But when the debt became too large, I couldn't manage anymore, I had to tell my parents”. Khanh recounted that he also didn't know when he started to become "addicted", when he started to drop out of school, indulging in groups of friends to play games day and night.
Another case is T, she came to boarding school in 2023. T almost lost her ability to concentrate due to using too many electronic devices. Talking to reporters about the early days of boarding school, T said: "I always imagined myself holding a phone, playing games.
According to teacher Nguyen Nhu Hiep - a teacher at a boarding school for special children: "The manifestations of children addicted to games, addicted to electronic devices and social networks are loss of concentration, talking nonsense, and unclear content. Many children when their parents bring them here are almost in a state similar to autism, losing control.
Information from the school, since 2019, about 50% of the more than 400 students studying here are addicted to games, addicted to online gambling. The age of young people addicted to games is increasingly younger. If in the past, children addicted to games were usually at the age of 14-15, in recent years it has appeared in children 10-11 years old.
A study by the National Institute of Mental Health shows that in the age group of 10-24, people with an average internet usage time of over 3 hours per day account for a high proportion (over 51.3%), of which the longest time is up to 15 hours/day. Worryingly, the rate of adolescents aged 10-18 addicted to games, online gambling addiction, and social media addiction is increasing, especially in major cities such as: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City.
According to a survey report by the Vietnam Youth Research Institute (2024), nearly 65% of secondary and high school students regularly play games at least 5 times a week, of which about 25% have obvious signs of game addiction, expressed through irritability, skipping meals, skipping school or lying to parents to play.
Protecting children in cyberspace
The workshop to gather opinions on the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 147/2024/ND-CP of the Government on management, provision, and use of internet services and online information, organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on July 23, focused heavily on solutions to protect children in cyberspace.
The draft supplements regulations on protecting children in the online environment. Parents or guardians register and manage accounts of children under 16 years old; social network businesses must identify child users, distribute appropriate content, protect privacy and prevent harmful content.
The draft also amends regulations in the direction of strengthening child protection by tightening the account authentication mechanism, adjusting the playing time limit for people under 16 years old, and perfecting regulations on health warnings and criteria for classifying games by age.
Regarding this issue, Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Phan Tam said: "The Drafting Committee continues to coordinate with relevant units to study in the direction of instead of focusing on determining "is it a child or not" or "what age is the child", switch to the direction: "If it is a child, how should it be protected?". The main management goal is not to prohibit or excessively restrict children from accessing social networks, but the focus is to ensure that when children use social network services, they are placed in an environment suitable for their age, protected from inappropriate risks.
The Deputy Minister emphasized that the younger children are, the stricter the protection layer, the more they are monitored by their parents, and there are many features to prevent and limit them. In addition, the main responsibility in protecting children must be placed on the platforms. The platform must have full tools and solutions, proactively develop measures to control and recognize children's accounts or accounts used by children to automatically adjust the provision of corresponding and appropriate services.
This is a new approach of Vietnam in digital space management. Of course, completing the legal framework is a necessary condition. More importantly, the responsibility of schools and families in protecting children from the online vortex.
