第1章 你好呀，数字小世界！| Chapter 1 Hello, Digital World!

At 4:30 PM, the moment the school bell rings, Xiao Yu grabs his mom’s old phone and sprints home. First, he scrolls through 3 short videos of dancing pandas that make him giggle nonstop. Then he opens *Eggy Party*, a super popular online game, and joins a team match. His teammate, with the username “Starry Candy”, plays so well that Xiao Yu is sure it’s his classmate Xiao Mei from next door — until the match ends, and he sees “Starry Candy”’s avatar is a flying dinosaur. Wait, who is this mystery player? Just as he’s about to ask, his mom calls from the kitchen: “Dinner’s ready!” He yells at the smart speaker on the desk: “Xiao Ai, play ‘The Mighty One’!” The speaker starts singing the familiar song immediately. Then he asks casually, “What’s the weather like in Beijing tomorrow?” The speaker answers right away: “It will be 18 to 26 degrees Celsius tomorrow, and it might rain in the afternoon. Remember to bring an umbrella.”

Across the ocean, 9-year-old Lily is doing almost the same thing after school. She first watches a 2-minute craft video of making polymer clay keychains on TikTok, then opens an AI drawing app to design a keychain with her favorite cartoon cat on it. After saving the picture, she sends it to her best friend in Australia via a messaging app, and they chat for 10 minutes about what color the keychain should be. When her mom reminds her to finish her math homework, she opens an online learning platform to do 20 practice questions, and the platform even gives her a little gold star for getting all the answers right.

Have you ever had a day like Xiao Yu and Lily’s, full of phones, tablets, games, AI tools and online chats? We call all these activities “digital life”, and the invisible world where all these things exist is the “digital world”. <digital_life>### What is the digital world? You might think the digital world is far away, like a place only in sci-fi movies, but actually, it’s right next to you, as close as the phone in your pocket or the tablet on your desk. Think of your phone, tablet, computer, smart speaker, learning machine and even the watch on your wrist as “doors” to the digital world. When you open a short video app, you push open the door to the video hall in the digital world, where you can see pandas dancing in Sichuan, dolphins playing in the ocean, and even kids in Africa playing football on the playground — all of these videos are stored in the digital world, waiting for you to watch. When you play an online game, you push open the door to the game arena in the digital world, where you can team up with a kid from Xinjiang who loves playing the same character as you, or fight a boss with a kid from the United States who is good at strategy. You don’t need to take a plane to meet them, you just need to open the “door” of the game. Even the AI drawing tool you use is a “magic studio” in the digital world. You just need to say what you want to draw, like “a future city with flying cars and rainbow bridges”, and AI will help you put together all the pictures it has learned in the digital world, and make the picture you want in a few seconds. The voice of the smart speaker is also from the digital world — it records millions of human voices in advance, and when you ask it a question, it picks the right answer from the huge “library” in the digital world and sends it to you. The digital world is not just for playing and having fun. When you take an online class, you are learning knowledge stored in the digital world; when you buy a stationery set on an online shopping platform, you are trading with a shopkeeper through the digital world; when you video call your grandparents who live in another city, you are chatting through the “video window” of the digital world. The digital world has already become a part of our real life, as important as the school, the park and the supermarket near your home.

But wait, if the digital world is so convenient and fun, do we need to pay attention to rules when we play there? Just like we have rules in the real world — don’t run in the hallway at school, don’t pick other people’s things, don’t hit others — does the digital world have rules too? Of course! The “rules” of the digital world are law. <law_basics>### What is law? It’s the “game rule” of the digital world You might think law is something far away, only related to police catching bad guys, but actually, law is like the “game rule” of our whole life, including the digital world. Remember when you play *Eggy Party*, there are clear rules: you can’t grab other people’s props for no reason, you can’t intentionally sabotage your teammates, you can’t say bad words to other players. If you break the rules, the game system will warn you, or even kick you out of the room and ban your account for a few days. The law of the digital world is just like this “game rule”, but it is more powerful and protects more people. For example, if someone spreads bad information on the short video platform that scares children, or uses AI to make fake videos of other people to scam money, or steals other people’s game accounts to sell them, these are all acts that break the “game rule” of the digital world, and the law will punish these bad people. At the same time, the law also protects your rights in the digital world: if someone steals the pictures you draw and says they are his own, or someone secretly records your voice and sells your personal information to others, the law will help you get back your rights and let the bad people apologize and compensate you.

Many people think the digital world is a “place outside the law”, and what they do online has nothing to do with the law, but this is a very wrong idea! The digital world is not a lawless place, and every move you make online will leave traces. Let’s look at a real example that happened last year: A 10-year-old primary school student named Lele liked playing *Eggy Party* very much. One day, he used his dad’s phone to play the game, and saw that the platform was selling a limited-edition dinosaur skin that he liked very much. He knew his dad wouldn’t let him spend money, so he guessed his dad’s payment password, and spent 3800 yuan in one go to buy 10 skins. When his dad checked his phone bill that night and found the strange expenditure, he was so angry that he wanted to hit Lele, but after calming down, he contacted the game company with his ID card and Lele’s birth certificate, and told them what happened. According to the law, children under 8 years old have no ability to make civil acts by themselves, so any consumption they make without the consent of their legal guardians is invalid. The game company checked the materials and returned all 3800 yuan to Lele’s dad within 7 days. Do you see? The law not only punishes bad people, but also protects us children who may make mistakes. If there were no law in the digital world, what would happen? Bad people could scam children of their parents’ money at will, spread bad information to scare children, steal children’s personal information and sell it to bad people… The digital world would become a very scary place. So law is the “super shield” that protects us in the digital world, and also the “compass” that makes the digital world develop better.

Let’s take a look at how law protects us in the digital world through a picture: 【纸书插图1-1：数字世界小地图】 (Note for print edition: This is a full-color illustration on the right page of Chapter 1. The left half of the picture shows the real world where Xiao Yu lives: his home, his school, the community playground and the small supermarket. Arrows point from these real places to the right half of the picture, which is the digital world: there are icons for short videos, online games, AI drawing tools, smart speakers and online learning platforms. In the middle of the two halves is a golden shield with the words “Law Protects” written on it, connecting the real world and the digital world, meani