How to prevent teenagers from imitating short videos with frequent injuries?
● Driven by interests, some short video platforms and video producers publish short videos with surprising, exciting, dangerous and difficult contents in order to attract attention and increase traffic, many of which hide potential dangerous factors, and users are prone to accidents when imitating.
● For high-risk videos and spoof videos, the short video platform should fulfill the obligation of early review and practice the principle of video review before broadcasting; For dangerous videos or videos with strong professionalism, if they are identified as dangerous or potentially dangerous, warning terms such as "Do not imitate" should be marked.
● After the accident, the guardian also has an unshirkable responsibility. Guardians should guide children to use all kinds of network service platforms in a healthy and controlled way; Earnestly perform supervisory duties, spend more time with children, and help children strengthen their ability to distinguish right from wrong.
Our reporter Du Xiao
Intern Dai Xueqing of our newspaper
Recently, two girls in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, imitated online celebrity’s anchor to make popcorn with cans at home. As a result, they were burned seriously by careless operation, and one of them suffered a total burn area of 96%, and finally died unfortunately.
The girl’s father, Mr. Zhou, said in an interview with the media that the two girls often play together and watch short videos on their mobile phones. Afterwards, he looked at similar videos on related short video platforms and found no risk reminder.
In recent years, the short video industry has developed rapidly, but some incidents of user casualties caused by imitating popular short videos have also been exposed, among which the accident rate of minors is relatively high. Regarding the dangerous content in short videos, the reporter of Legal Daily interviewed relevant experts in the industry.
Teenagers are keen on short videos.
Accidents happen from time to time
It is understood that the two girls in Zaozhuang City ignited high-concentration alcohol during the process of making popcorn with pop cans by imitating short online videos, causing explosion and fire. The 12-year-old Xiao Yu was slightly injured, while the 14-year-old Zhe Zhe died unfortunately because of his injuries.
"When I first started to do it, I didn’t respond, so I poured the alcohol up. It just exploded when I poured it up. At that time, when I saw a fire, I quickly ran out to catch water to put out the fire. At that time, I was covered with fire, accidentally fell down, and ran out to call someone for help." Xiaoyu recalled.
The "Legal Daily" reporter noted that such injuries caused by teenagers blindly imitating short videos have occurred too many times, and they are not limited to a short video platform, and the imitation forms are diverse and the dangers are different.
In March 2018, a father and daughter in Wuhan imitated the somersault of a short video platform and finally hugged together. When the father grabbed his daughter and flipped it 180 degrees upwards, he suddenly slipped off. The two-year-old daughter landed on her head, causing serious damage to the spinal cord. The upper body has been unable to move.
In May 2018, an 8-year-old boy in Xi ‘an, Shaanxi Province, caused his 6-year-old brother to stumble and fall, and his chin was stitched with ten stitches because he imitated the whole video of a platform "tape sticking to the door".
The "Research Report on the Development of Online Video in China in 2019" released by the 7th China Internet Audio-visual Conference shows that as of December 2018, the number of online video users (including short videos) in China has reached 725 million, and short videos have shown explosive growth.
The reporter of "Legal Daily" learned in the interview that short videos are becoming more and more popular among teenagers and are welcomed by many people.
"In our class, many students brush short videos, and whoever doesn’t play will be out." Xiaoyu, a junior high school student, told the reporter of Legal Daily that every day during recess, he could hear his classmates humming "Tik Tok Divine Comedy" and chatting with online celebrity jokes, and sometimes he would imitate one or two funny videos to make jokes with his friends. Some students also opened their own short video accounts to post videos online, and invited teachers and students to pay attention to them. The number of likes and comments exceeded 1,000, and they became small stars in the school.
Xiaoyu also said that he is also a loyal user of short videos. He brushes short video apps every day after school, and often forgets the time by brushing short videos. Sometimes when I see the novel and interesting contents in short videos, I can’t help but pull my classmates and parents to imitate them.
This year’s Spring Festival, Xiaoyu brushed a short video of spraying hot water into the air to freeze instantly. At that time, he thought it was very interesting and imitated the video to sprinkle water. As a result, the water did not freeze, so Xiaoyu was very disappointed.
When asked if he was aware of the danger that hot water spilled over his head might cause burns, Xiaoyu said that he was not aware of it. As for why he imitated such short videos, Xiaoyu replied without hesitation: "Fun!"
Zhao Liangshan, a lawyer in Shaanxi Province, has taken over some cases related to short videos. He believes that there are three main reasons for the accidents caused by imitating short videos: First, short videos contain dangerous content, that is, some short videos containing thrilling, strange and difficult contents are produced and released in order to attract attention; Second, the wide spread of dangerous content; Third, blind imitation or unguided imitation may lead to the imitator’s accident.
"The accident probability of minors is higher than that of adults. This is because minors have the characteristics of strong curiosity, love to try, immature mind, poor judgment and nonstandard operation, and have poor identification of potential dangers. Therefore, the possibility of risks remains high. " Zhao Liangshan said.
Dangerous content attracts attention
The publisher should have a warning.
What is the reason that some short video platforms have a lot of video content with hidden risk factors?
Li Danlin, a professor at China Communication University, believes that with the popularity and maturity of the Internet, short videos have become one of the main entertainment ways for many people to kill fragmentation time and obtain information by virtue of their rich content information and direct sensory stimulation. At the same time, short videos have the product advantages of strong participation and low production threshold. Users are not only information recipients, but also creative output subjects. Publishing videos attracts fans’ attention and rewards, and even makes profits by being pushed to the homepage of the platform. It is this powerful communication and liquidity that attracts more participants and intensifies the competition in the short video field.
"Driven by interests, some short video platforms and video producers release short videos with surprising, exciting, dangerous and difficult contents in order to attract attention and increase traffic. Many of them hide potential dangerous factors, and users are prone to accidents when imitating. Although the duration of a single short video is short, this kind of short video App can kill time. Especially for young children with poor self-control, they are easy to indulge in it and occupy too much energy. And the short video content is complicated, and some vulgar and harmful content may endanger children’s physical and mental health and even affect the formation of their values. " Li Danlin said.
After an accident, should video producers and platforms be responsible for the damage caused by users imitating short video content?
Zhao Liangshan believes that as long as the video content of the video publisher does not have infringement reasons, illegal reasons and induced plots, it is generally not responsible. On the contrary, it is necessary to bear the responsibility corresponding to its fault. But at the same time, it should be noted that video communication platforms and websites should make necessary tips and warnings for dangerous videos. For high-risk videos and spoof videos, we should do a good job of reviewing them in advance and practice the principle of video trial before broadcasting; For dangerous videos or videos with strong professionalism, if they are identified as dangerous behaviors or potentially dangerous, warning terms such as "Do not imitate" or "Professional actions, beware of injury, and proceed under guidance" shall be marked, or technical ambiguity and other means shall be adopted to prevent the audience from imitating.
"If the video is violent or illegal, measures such as informing, deleting, shielding, banning broadcasting and disconnecting links should be taken in time to prevent short video platforms from becoming ways and accomplices to spread dangerous behaviors. If the above management responsibilities are not fulfilled, the platform party shall bear corresponding responsibilities. " Zhao Liangshan said.
Li Danlin believes that the short video platform should strictly establish a pre-evaluation mechanism, and the platform should formulate more detailed and detailed content specifications according to relevant laws and regulations, clearly inform all users whether their uploaded content meets the publishing standards, strengthen their sense of responsibility, and reduce the possibility of danger from the source. Platforms that ignore public interests and excessively pursue traffic should be required to bear corresponding civil liabilities according to the actual situation.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, believes that the anchor is not only the photographer, performer and disseminator of Duan Zi, but also the winner of Duan Zi and live broadcast traffic bonus. From an economic point of view, the main purpose of the anchor shooting segment to get attention is to get traffic. Taking the live broadcast platform as an example, there are two channels for realizing traffic. One is live popularity and rewarding profit. For example, an anchor with 10 to 20 million fans has hundreds of thousands of people live online every time, and the rewards for one or two hours of live broadcast every day range from tens of thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan. The second is to profit from advertising. For example, an anchor with 10 to 20 million fans publishes a paragraph advertisement, and the cost ranges from several hundred thousand yuan to millions of yuan.
"From the perspective of traffic realization, the segment shot by the anchor must have a high degree of attention, so that there is a chance to realize it. In addition to high-quality and high-cost videos, most anchors get the fast track of attention, which is either vulgar or curious. This video that caused burns in Shandong belongs to the range of curiosity videos. " Zhu Wei said.
Zhu Wei believes that an anchor should judge the influence of his works, especially the big anchor with 20 to 30 million fans, knowing that his fans are of complex age, should also know that this video may be imitated after broadcast, and should also know the dangers of flammable and explosive substances such as alcohol. However, in this incident, the anchor did not make any reminders or hints in the short video. Instead, he was showing off, performing and promoting such practices, as if such dangerous behaviors were commonplace. This kind of behavior, from the point of view of legal responsibility determination, should know but pretend not to know, and the due obligation has not been fulfilled. This is to let the damage happen, which is indirect intention and should bear tort liability.
Constantly strengthen content management
Parents are responsible for guardianship.
The video casualties of two girls imitating in Zaozhuang have aroused widespread concern in society. According to a survey conducted by Weibo, a media official, 41.48% of netizens think that individual short videos are very harmful and should not be spread. 35.52% of netizens suggested that the platform should strengthen audit management; 16.21% netizens think that video publishers are grandstanding and should be sealed; Another 6.72% netizens think that this kind of video is an alternative idea.
Zhao Liangshan believes that the frequent short video problems on the Internet are still mainly due to the rapid development of the Internet, while laws and regulations are relatively lagging behind and supervision is difficult. Some people use the Internet to opportunistically walk on the edge of the law, resulting in some problems not being effectively managed.
In fact, in recent years, the supervision and management of short videos has become more and more strict.
On January 9th, China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association issued "Management Standard for Network Short Video Platform" and "Detailed Rules for Auditing Network Short Video Content", which made detailed requirements on short video content and technology.
On March 28th, the National Network Information Office organized short video platforms such as "Tik Tok", "Aauto Quicker" and "Volcano Video" to pilot the online youth addiction prevention system. This is the first attempt in the field of network short video to prevent teenagers from indulging, which is of innovative significance for caring for the healthy growth of minors, fulfilling social responsibilities of the industry and creating a good network environment.
Li Danlin believes that China has detailed rules and regulations on the content and management of Internet short videos, but the successive introduction of corresponding laws and regulations cannot completely cover the problems exposed by the rapid development of short videos. For example, how to define and review some short videos that are not within the scope of prohibited rules but do have security risks? Should video producers and platform parties be completely exempted from the accident after the video publishing subject clearly identifies the safety tips? Such problems are not only related to the establishment of laws and regulations in the industry, but also related to many issues such as ethics and management, which need to be further refined and improved.
Zhao Liangshan suggested that the supervision of Internet platforms should be strengthened, laws and regulations should be improved, and responsibilities, contents and illegal situations should be determined by legislation to increase the illegal cost of Internet platforms; Implement the self-correction and self-inspection responsibility of the Internet platform itself, strengthen the internal management of enterprises, and put forward practical tasks, objectives and requirements for auditors. Once there is a breach of contract, in addition to punishing the enterprise, the main person in charge should also be punished; Increase technical monitoring, set up an automatic screening system for short videos harmful to people’s health, and constantly optimize the content of short videos watched by teenagers to limit the viewing time.
Li Danlin suggested that in the network era when everyone has a "microphone", it is also essential to give full play to the supervisory role of users. The short video platform should encourage users to actively participate in content supervision, and encourage users to feed back short videos with violations or potential safety hazards to the platform in time, so as to broaden the supervision channels.
"After the accident, the child guardian also has an unshirkable responsibility. First of all, before equipping or using mobile terminals such as mobile phones for minors, guardians should be aware that the network will bring both advantages and disadvantages to young children. How to guide children to use various network service platforms healthily and moderately is the primary responsibility of parents. Secondly, as the closest person to the child, the guardian should earnestly perform his supervisory duties, spend more time with the child, understand their interests and concerns, find out the abnormal behavior of the child in time, and prevent it from being delayed and stopped in time. Finally, guardians should assume the responsibility of educating children and help them strengthen their ability to distinguish right from wrong. " Li Danlin said.
Zhu Wei believes that in general, parents as guardians should bear the first responsibility. In this incident, children can easily find such a dangerous thing as alcohol and put it into practice, which is obviously caused by the unfavorable parental supervision.
"In the Internet age, parents’ responsibilities are even more arduous. In addition to offline daily monitoring, online parental monitoring systems, anti-addiction systems, and youth protection models all require close cooperation between parents and platforms. Child custody is a scope of social co-governance. It is impossible to rely solely on the platform and the government. Parents, schools and society must all join in to form a monitoring system from law to technology and from point to point. " Zhu Wei said.