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China Defines Internet Addiction
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Nov 10, 2008 05:45 PM
from the one-more-addiction-to-the-list dept.
from the one-more-addiction-to-the-list dept.
narramissic writes "Three years after the first clinic dedicated to Internet addiction opened in Beijing, Chinese doctors have now officially defined it as an ailment. Those afflicted with this ailment spend six or more hours a day online and exhibit at least one of the following symptoms: difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress. Do you meet the criteria? You're in good company: About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said."
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First psot (Score:5, Funny)
What did that say? (Score:5, Funny)
I read that as "China Defends Internet Addiction".
I hear they also have a problem with youth in asia, but I've been assured that the government has the problem well in hand.
Just One More Way for Them to Stop You (Score:5, Funny)
About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said.
News Anchor: And in today's news, an unnamed Chinese dissident has been treated in Beijing for <sinister sounding voice>internet addiction</sinister sounding voice>. After monitoring his internet usage and anti-government e-mails through his ISP, the government was able to find the man and get him the help he needs at a special government run institution at a remote location for his own good. Let's hope he has a swift recovery ...
Wow work related injury here I come (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I guess they'd be irritated and in physical distress after 6 or more hours on the internet, unless they were surfing with their laptop in the washroom ...
As for "work-related injury" - no problem. You get fired, lose your internet access, problem solved.
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, they can't fire you over your injury.
But, hey, these last few weeks your productivity has been rather low, and, well, you don't mesh well with our corporate climate. We're going to have to let you go.
Parent
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:4, Insightful)
"Internet addiction" is no more or less real than "Television addiction." Both have the same cure - TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!
Ditto for "XBox addiction", "Playstation addiction", "Wii addiction", "Gamers addiction", "SMS addiction". Turn it off. Can't turn it off? No problem - it's currently a self-correcting situation, since you'll end up not being able to afford your habit.
It's like people who weigh 600 pounds and say "I can't help it - it's glandular." No, it's not. It's from shoveling food into your face regardless of the consequences. Same thing with smokers. They go from "I can quit any time" to "I can't stop." We don't excuse drunk drivers because they decided to have one to many, we should do the same for other "lifestyle addictions."
I'm all for helping people who help themselves, not those who want to hide behind the "addiction" label as an excuse to do nothing. Look at how many lardos say they need gastric bypass surgery to lose weight ... while scoffing down their 3rd box of Twinkies and washing it down with their 4th gallon of soda pop. Here's a thought - make it illegal for anyone who's obese to buy or possess junk food. Ditto for the enablers - you know, the parents who also weigh 500 pounds and insist on shoveling sh*t down their kids' throats.
As for the "internet addicts", who gives a frak? They're antisocial slobs anyways. In times past, they would have been hooked on TV, or crack, to fill their hollow lives.
Sounds mean? Well, you know something - life can be mean. If you want to spend all your life glued to the internet, don't be surprised if nobody wants to hang around you in real life. You made your choice to be ultra-booooring. Just don't as me to help subsidize it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good job parroting a popular sentiment. (Score:5, Insightful)
You make a good point that not *all* addictions are true "addictions", but it's a point we already know.
All addictions are psychological addictions so anything that makes you feel good ends up rewiring your brain (this is why you constantly think about what you are addicted to, your brain is looking for ways to feel good again) - and hence your brain rebels against you when you try to quit (it literally becomes a civil war inside your head). So its not really a matter of what are "real" addictions - they are all real because you make them real - even if to the outside observer there looks to be no addictive component.
Parent
Re:Wow work related injury here I come (Score:4, Insightful)
... DO NOTHING ABOUT IT ...
Unfortunately it is not quite as simple as "doing something about it"; it's like saying "everybody complains about America's addiction to oil, but they DO NOTHING ABOUT IT". As you probably know, you can do a lot about things and still not have any success.
When you are trying to beat addiction it feels like you are fighting against your whole body and all your instincts; which is why that old "Just say no" campaing was so cringelingly stupid and totally missed the point. You can decide all you want that now you are going to stop smoking/shooting heroin/overeating or whatever, but when the craving hit you, it's amazing how obvious it suddenly seems that you don't actually need or want to stop,
Parent
Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Addicted to being human, wanting freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA, the Chinese government is not limiting anyone's leisure activities, rather Chinese doctors have formally defined Internet addiction. This is likely a product of the cultural sentiment of abhorring excess in any form and living life by a framework of rules (three square meals a day, eight hours of sleep, etc.), which prolonged hours surfing the web obviously tends to disrupt. Another factor is since the Internet is a rather new development in China, most users are teens and 20-to-30-somethings. People beyond this age group tend to be very traditional, and tend to look down on all the shiny new technology stuff that they don't get (isn't this a problem in the West too? Maybe to a lesser degree.) I know my mother always bugs me when I'm watching too much TV/on the computer too much/reading too many books (I used to average about ten a week back in high school, so I guess that qualifies as excess for her), and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the government.
I don't quite understand your question regarding the status quo.
My family left China because my father thought he could have better opportunities in America, and later Canada. How wrong he was. He's back in China now, and won't stop going on how about how his old buddies have all struck it rich during the rapid economic development, and how he could have been a lot better off it he stayed behind. Personally I think I've become a more well-rounded person than if I had stayed in China, but I wouldn't mind living or working there once I complete my degree, especially since fluency in English could apparently command quite a premium.
Parent
Looks like they have defined IT jobs as an ailment (Score:5, Funny)
Each of which is all too easily inflicted at the hands of a PHB [wikipedia.org] (cluelessly imposing impossible deadlines), without one single minute of WoW involved...
Step 2 (Score:4, Funny)
Step 1 is admit your addiction... yup, i'm addicted.
Well if step 2 is submit to a higher authority.
Well, I have submitted to the power of Google.
Now leave me alone, I got me some good internet.
The COMPLETE 12 Step for Chinese Internet Addicts (Score:3, Funny)
I'll run your comment off right off the rail
1. We admitted we were powerless over the Internet (even the filtered one in China) - that our lives had become unmanageable (Communism is good).
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (already defined as Google) could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (Eric Schmidt) as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral database inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God...er Eric, ak
Addiction (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously conflicted here. Addiction should never encompass anything that the bulk of society uses every day. I would imagine that the fundamental definition for any addiction should include a majority of negative repercussion, or at least that the addiction would cause the person's ultimate doom.
Look at alcoholism. Approximately 2% of alcoholics get Korsakoff's Syndrome [wikipedia.org], which ultimately destroys the person's sense of reality while Thiamine B6 is absent from the 3rd & 4th ventricle of the brain long enough for damage to erode/reconfigure brain cells. There is no parallel result in internet addiction, apart from mood swings and perhaps suicide attempts, but these are all mostly related to social mishaps online. Internet abuse does not cause anything like Korsakoff's.
Drug addiction, seems to all fit.
Alas, where a parallel could exist would be with sex addiction, although one could argue that the STD's cause your doom.
About the only thing Internet Addiction could cause is An Hero Syndrome [encycloped...matica.com] (NSFW).
Medically, there could be serious degenerative disorders as a result of being fixated in one place for long periods of time, or perhaps dietary issues from eating and drinking the worst possible food in order to have more time online, but again that's all a bit of a stretch.
If I had to guess, I would say that the term Internet Addiction is a misnomer. This is more aptly that people who struggle to get back online crave attention because their own lives are sparse or deficient in areas of socialization, so they feel powerful online and therefore need it.
I think there is a long way to go on this subject and China's efforts, while interesting, are not quite there yet.
Not addicted (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internet is simply ingrained into my life. Imagine a world without coffee. I wouldn't care much because I don't have a taste for it but I bet that millions will cry out in terror and will suddenly be silenced(faiting by lack of cafeine in their bloodstream :) ). Now imagine a world without the internet. I can't. I could. Around 10 years ago we got 33k dailup to get access to "this curious thing called the internet". We used it more and more untill one day we got a bill of 120+ eur and we knew it was time to switch to cable. Every since that moment I and the internet have been connected. If I want to look up an address or zipcode I go the right site and tada, zipcode and address. If I want to look up a term I go to Wikipedia, type the word in and tada, I've got the meaning and some deeper information about the subject. I check my mail every day to see if I have recieved any messages from people and institutions all over the world. If I want to know about technological development I visit tweakers.net or slashdot. I discuss on internetforums in many different countries and have developed my skills in some foreign languages that way.
I am not the only one. The whole world is addicted to the internet. Sending data is now something you do with a few clicks and a few lines of text. You can send huge amounts of data from Vladivostok to Bogota in a matter of seconds. People all around the world can check videomessages people leave on youtube.
Now imagine that somebody "turns off the central switch". I can only fear what would happen. Stock markets would probably go bananas because they are not being fed regular data. The most important letter exchange format in the world(e-mail) would cease to be and sending messages to eachother would become a matter of days not seconds. Distributed projects would die and it would cease to be effective. And that's only the things I can think of. Imagine the extra effects.
We are all addicted to the internet whether we use it or not. That's the paradox.
Crackberry (Score:5, Funny)
So if my blackberry is constantly connected to the internet and it's on 24/7, I guess that means
...
...
I'm ... what were we talking about? I was checking my mail.
Korea (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is just as bad, if not far worse there. The prolific MMO play-rate [plus localised social networking] doesn't help either.
But somehow, I don't see Korea classifying it as an illness anytime soon.
Bad term? (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, an alcoholic will get the DT's if they don't drink. A heroin addict will convulse and sweat if they don't get their fix. A cigarette smoker will get headaches, tremors, and an increased appetite without their smokes. I should also mention that alcoholics and some other drug users, when quitting cold turkey, can actually die from withdrawal.
Take away and addicts internet and what, they read the paper or watch TV instead? That's not an addiction, sorry. Take the internet away from an 'internet addict' for a week and they will have found other things to do. A drug addict will still be thinking about his drugs... for months and even years.
I should mention I smoke cigarettes, I'm a recovering alcoholic and have had various drug addictions when I was younger and stupider. I use the internet all the time and even play WoW, but it's hardly an addiction and don't see any possible way it could be classified as such unless there are marked differences in brain chemistry or something like that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Acute effects
Acute (or recreational) drug use causes the release and prolonged action of dopamine and serotonin within the reward circuit. Different types of drugs produce these effects by different methods. Dopamine (DA) appears to harbor the largest effect and its action is characterized. DA binds to the D1 receptor, triggering a signaling cascade within the cell. cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) phosphorylates cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), a transcription factor, wh
Haha! (Score:3, Funny)
6 hours a day?
L4|\/|3rz.
Thanks to virtualization, I spent 6 hours on the Internet in just the past 40 minutes!
Those Are Symptoms, Not the Disease (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are symptoms of people who aren't high-functioning addicts.
Any addiction is defined by one simple criterion: can the person exercise self control over the behavior?
The question can become existential: what if they don't want to quit? If they're high-functioning, they might never have call to exercise self control. In which case what's the difference whether they're addicts or not? The only question then is whether something might change requiring their quitting, and they might not be able to, which could be a problem.
Besides, everyone is "addicted" to food. Few complain about the addiction, except people who can't afford to eat, who have some other compulsion/obsession that conflicts with eating, or who have a compounded problem of eating too much. But we all live with our basic addiction to food, which isn't really a problem, and is even celebrated. Why should any other addiction matter, if there are no bad symptoms?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that there is a huge mental health industry with a vested interest in creating (oops, I mean "identifying") new classes of illness that they will have to paid to treat.
I suspect that what's happening is that they are identifying something that has become a pillar of an individual's life-style and then claiming that this constitutes an "addiction" because the person suffers anxiety when the thing is taken away. A person with a normal social life would start to exhibit anxiety and yearning if soc