When visiting shopping malls, many people often notice groups of primary and secondary school students in digital product stores like Apple and Huawei, occupying display units for long periods to play games and watch short videos. The experience areas, originally intended for consumers to try out products, have quietly turned into "free internet cafes."
Many primary and secondary school students stay in stores for long periods, gathering around tablet and computer display units, standing there for one or two hours at a time. Some children, whose access to electronic devices is strictly controlled at home, come to stores to kill time.
Some parents even leave their children in the store while they go shopping, treating the store as a free babysitting service. They believe that with many people and staff around, it is safer for their children to stay there. However, children occupying display units for extended periods also deprives regular customers of the opportunity to try out the devices, disrupting normal store operations.
In response to this phenomenon, store staff stated that they do not have the right to expel children who come to the store and can only passively wait for them to leave on their own. They only step in to ask children to vacate the display units when other customers need to try them out. For safety reasons, stores are also reluctant to forcibly remove unaccompanied minors.
Even though some stores set restrictions in advance to prohibit unauthorized downloads of new software on display units, they cannot completely prevent children from using the internet for entertainment. Children can easily bypass various anti-addiction mechanisms by opening web-based mini-games through the device's browser or by using accounts that haven't been logged out in the store.
Education experts point out that the chaos of experience stores turning into "free internet cafes" cannot be solved by a single entity; it requires coordinated efforts from multiple parties for comprehensive regulation. Brand retailers should proactively assume social responsibility by promptly advising and reminding minors who linger in stores to play on devices for extended periods, thereby standardizing the in-store experience order.
Communities, libraries, and youth activity centers can offer more public interest activities to provide children with additional offline leisure options. Schools can also assign moderate transitional learning tasks to help students switch from holiday mode back to campus life.