MOS Jasmin Lau's Remarks At Tencent's Beyond The Screen: Healthy Digital Play ASEAN Campaign Launch In Singapore

A very good morning, everybody, Mr Murphy Chao from Tencent Singapore.

I am very excited to be here with all of you at today's event. It's a Saturday morning, and it’s so great to see many families out here at Ci Yuan Community Club to find out more about what we can do to support our children's digital well-being.

In today's world, parenting is very tough. Many of us don't quite have the time as working parents to spend with our children, to engage them and play, and to bring them outdoors. And to be honest, many of us do rely on the screen sometimes to support our parenting duties.

We use it sometimes as a babysitter. We use it sometimes to calm down their tantrums, but at the back of our heads, we actually know this may not be the best for our children. But we struggle, and that is one way to survive through the difficult times.

So last year, when we did a survey across many parents in Singapore, we started to realise that many parents do want help. About 37% of parents say that they would like more support from the Government in helping them navigate their children's digital well-being. So, we are trying to do more now this year in terms of running workshops in the community to help more parents understand what are some practical tips they can apply with their children, in terms of parental controls on the devices, as well as conversations they can have with their own children.

We have done two such workshops in Ang Mo Kio GRC with TOUCH Cyber Wellness and Look Up Family. And when the parents joined us for these workshops, it felt like a bonding or therapy session for many of the parents as well. They started to learn why it could be unhealthy for children to be so addicted to devices, and they also took away some useful tips on how to do better.

We will do more in the coming months in Ang Mo Kio GRC. We will be running more workshops and community events, and we hope by the end of the year, more parents feel equipped and less helpless. We feel that many of them will end up feeling a lot more well-resourced in terms of managing their children's use of digital devices.

But we can't load all of this on the parents alone, and so we are quite happy when all of our partners across the ecosystem come together to support this effort.

Today's launch of Tencent’s partnership agreement with IMDA is one such example, and we are happy that our industry players are now coming onboard to support more of our efforts for our children's digital well-being.

With the launch of today's Beyond the Screen: Healthy Digital Play campaign, I encourage all parents to make full use of the resources, activities and support that will become available through this initiative. There will also be a sharing later by Narash, a psychotherapist and co-founder of local charity Impact, on practical ways parents can understand their children's digital worlds, use games as a bridge for conversation, and co-create healthy boundaries.

Finally, a very big thank you to Tencent for bringing this initiative to Singapore and for making Singapore your first stop in the ASEAN region. I look forward to your continued dedication in the years ahead to supporting our families in staying safe online. Thank you very much.