Last week, a Chinese youth was beaten to death at a boot camp for internet-addicted youngsters. CLIFFORD COONANin Beijing reports
IN CHINA, the teenagers’ addiction of choice is rarely booze, alcohol or even drugs. Chinese teenagers are prone to addiction to cyberspace, and recent years have seen the rise of internet boot camps – rehab centres run like army barracks, which try to wean the youngsters offline.
Government studies have shown that nearly 10 per cent of the country’s 100 million teenage web users could be addicted, and the government has introduced various measures to deal with the problem.
China is not alone in treating compulsive internet use as a mental health issue, but as with so many things here, this is a question of scale. China has the world’s largest population of webizens at 338 million and the government fears internet addiction could become a pandemic more widespread than swine flu.
Many Chinese youngsters are driven to internet addiction by the growing competitiveness in society.
The social costs are considerable. Some students play truant to stay at home online, a serious transgression in a country where education is prized as the only way of getting ahead and securing the future for the whole family.
And it seems like parents are right to be worried. Two years ago, a young Chinese man dropped dead after playing internet games for three consecutive days.
Prof Tao Hongkai, one of China’s best-known experts on treating internet addiction, believes that parents are as much to blame for internet addiction as the children.
“The key to curing internet addiction is the guidance by parents and psychological communication with children, to make children aware of the dangers of internet addiction, in order that they can save themselves from the addiction,” says Tao.
Internet addiction in China hit the headlines around the world this month after police said they were investigating counsellors at a boot camp for internet addicts after a teenage boy was beaten to death just hours after checking in.
Fifteen-year-old Deng Senshan was found dead, with bruises all over his body, and four trainers from the Qihang Salvation training camp in Nanning, in Guangxi province, were under investigation.
These camps are tough places – drill instructors put patients through their paces on the running track and the obstacle course as the young addicts try to cure their addictions. It appears that Deng Senshan had been locked in solitary after one gruelling session, and had then been beaten by the instructors for not running fast enough.
There are about 300 internet addiction boot camps in China, although there are no regulations about how they are run or who can set them up.
“Many parents are desperately trying everything to cure their children of internet addiction, and many companies are trying to take advantage. Review, regulation and supervision are urgently needed,” says Tao.
The news prompted the influential Legal Daily to run an editorial calling for greater regulation of the business to stop cases like those of Deng Senshan taking place. “Due to a lack of clear regulation, any individual or group can set up such an agency,” it said.
It’s not just tough love at these camps – counsellors also hold therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming, but generally the focus tends to be on the “short, sharp shock”.
Shock in a very literal sense. There was widespread horror when it emerged that some of these camps were using electro-shock treatment to “cure” the children.
In July, the Ministry of Health banned the use of electro-shock therapy as a treatment option, following negative media coverage of a centre where thousands of children were being shocked to stop their online addictions.
“Electro-shock therapy is particularly bad for young hearts. There are also many ridiculous treatment methods at these places, such as hypnosis, acupuncture, shouting therapy and so on. Those therapies could totally make healthy children ill,” says Tao.
It’s not just addiction to the internet that is impacting on China’s health sector. The Sohu website reported this week that the number of teen pregnancies in Shanghai rose sharply during the summer holiday period, largely because of youngsters meeting online.
“Teenagers often befriend each other over the internet, meet each other in person after developing feelings for each other, and engage in sexual activities which lead to unwanted pregnancies,” the article said.
The Great Firewall of China, the wide-ranging system of controls which the government uses to stop the spread of pornography and dissent online, has been effective in shutting down access to sites the government considers politically incorrect or smutty, and it has also stopped the video-sharing site YouTube, as well as Facebook and other online chat sites.
Most Chinese teens focus much more on local sites like Digu and Zuosa to make contact, and can usually find ways around the Great Firewall.
But they are keen to make contact with potential partners. The rigid nature of Chinese society, combined with the fact that most Chinese people live with their parents in small apartments until they get married, means that it is difficult for people to meet each other in the real world. School days are long and homework too, so random after-school liaisons need to be co-ordinated online, where there are all kinds of opportunities.
As part of China’s ongoing crackdown on moral turpitude, censors have compiled a list of 10 “suitable” online video games which they hope will help keep cyberspace pure for impressionable teenagers.
Last year the Ministry of Culture came up with a list of video games they considered “healthy”, with the ability to “enhance intelligence”.
Perhaps halting access to World of Warcraft and encouraging teens to access Rainbow Island Online and Wonderlands of learning and games will help wean them off their addictions.