China Treats Internet Addiction Very Seriously

eldavojohn writes "China has taken new extremes in preventing internet addiction in youths and is even offering boot camps to parents who want their child weaned from the electric teat. The article notes that 'no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory that heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction.' The article mentions the story of Sun Jiting who 'spends his days locked behind metal bars in this military-run installation, put there by his parents. The 17-year-old high school student is not allowed to communicate with friends back home, and his only companions are psychologists, nurses and other patients. Each morning at 6:30, he is jolted awake by a soldier in fatigues shouting, "This is for your own good!"' Sun found himself spending 15 hours or straight on the internet. Thanks to his parents' intervention and the treatment, he now has life mapped out until he's 84. "

This is intense

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to treatment when I was younger (for drugs), we had five year plans and such. We had a rating system where you're level 1-3 (for outpatient, level 4 is mandatory inpatient). Then if you had a serious drug addiction to say heroin you could by rights take an option to farm pigs in Alaska as a treatment option. We considered this rather extreme and was usually scheduled for 6-12 months. My addiction at 19 was a six year addiction to pot, meth, alcohol, lsd, mushrooms, cocaine, and opium (ordered by preference). Because, I didn't have any felonies I was considered a level 3 maximum outpatient required. This kid is worse off than the pig farmers for playing video games? I don't really get it and planning out to the age of 84 seems to be a setup for failure, I seem to think he's just trying to stay off of the 3rd floor.

Pathologizing dissent

[Brunellus]

Would seem to fit into the PRC's pattern of taking 'deviant' thought and pathologizing it. Now, instead of re-education camps, internet 'addicted' youths are treated with all the care and compassion the Party can muster.

I'll bet my last yuan renminbi that this will be used to lock up bloggers and other people with similar internet 'addictions.' Surely you must be addicted if your jones for information has you circumventing the Great Firewall of China, right?

Human Rights Watch: Abuse of Psychiatry in China

[reporter]

According to a report [hrw.org] issued by Human Rights Watch in 2006 March 17, "The systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in China became internationally known in late 1999, when large numbers of Falungong practitioners were reportedly interned in psychiatric hospitals. However, experts have long asserted that political abuse of psychiatry in China includes among its victims several other main target groups. In August 2002, GIP and HRW jointly published a 298-page report, 'Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era', which detailed China's extensive use of psychiatric detention as a means of silencing political dissidents, spiritual nonconformists, trade union activists, whistleblowers, and others. The report estimated that since the early 1980s more than 3,000 people had been incarcerated on such grounds."

One political dissident in China was imprisoned for 13 years in a psychiatric hospital.

That the Chinese government imprisons an Internet addict at the request of his own parents should surprise no one. The Chinese, not merely the government, regularly abuse psychiatry to achieve social or political goals.

The Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is not the Internet addict, the political dissident, or the other victims improperly imprisoned for supposed psychological problems.

Rather, the Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is Chinese society itself.

It's not just kids

[Wrexs0ul]

This is a raging debate in modern penal and support systems about whether the punishment/treatment does more harm than good. I'm sure you've heard someone say before that sending a first-time offender to prison only connects them with hardened, experienced criminals to learn from, and that's often the case. When inmates get out of prison they're not penitent for their crimes: they're smarter about how not to get caught next time.

On the other hand how can we address problems like this? Some people need monitored care, but outside of someone taking direct and personal responsibility for the individual we just can't do better than insitutionalizing someone right now.

Unless, you know, direct and personal responsibility for youth = parenting. But that's a can of worms I'm sure nobody wants to address.

Re:Before we get all high and mighty

[WolfWalker545]

Oh, they're still there. They've expanded beyond drug treatment claims to include 'behavior issues', but aren't staffed or licensed to deal with either. They usually get around that by claiming to be boarding schools, but then they frequently don't meet the licensing requirements to be schools, either. They now call themselves Therapeutic Boarding Schools for 'troubled teens'. If you look at the tactics they use for dealing with the kids, most of them fit in with what I was taught about brainwashing in North Korean and Vietnamese POW camps. It's no real surprise that a lot of the survivors of these programs wind up displaying PTSD later. A friend was sent to one of these places basically because she had problems getting along with her stepfather, one of her classmates there committed suicide not long ago (and it's certainly messed her up some, but she's coming to deal with it. Of course, one of the issues between her and her stepfather is that she's attracted to other women...)