According to the newly issued 2016 China Gaming Industry Report, China's mobile game players had reached 566 million by 2016, with adolescents as the major component.

If everyone spends several hours on mobile games every day, these 566 million people spend billions of hours on mobile games in total.

Compared with PC games, which require a certain place for playing, mobile games enable people to play anytime and anywhere as long as they are available. Teenagers easily get lost in games, leaving their schoolwork aside, separating themselves from social communication and even committing crimes.

Why are adolescents so attracted to mobile games? Children are mostly psychologically immature and unstable. They are usually living under pressure from school and parents. In games they can find the kind of respect and recognition that they can seldom find in reality. People born in the 1970s and 1980s had the experience of playing in video arcades, while those born in the 1990s have the memory of spending whole nights in cybercafés. Today, mobile games enable users to play whenever they wish. Games actually play the same role of appeasing the young's emotions.

Mobile games' psychological functions may be something that parents and teachers don't understand deeply. Parents could play mobile games together with their children, so that they get to know the charm of these games. Then, parents would know how to improve their family education and rebuild the relationship with their children. When they know what's attracting their children, they will have the chance to win back their children from mobile games.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article published in Guangming Daily on September 4)