Internet junkies kick habit in boot
camp By Pallavi Aiyar
BEIJING - In a nondescript compound on the
southern outskirts of Beijing, groups of
youngsters in military fatigues run in disciplined
lines, sweat pouring down their foreheads in the
noon sun. Drill sergeants bark relentless orders
right in their faces, which on closer inspection
are revealed to be painfully young. Inside the
combat outfits, many of those marching, running
and performing a variety of calisthenics are only
13 or 14 years old.
This is a military
training camp, but the youngsters in question are
not soldiers in training. They are in fact
Internet addicts
receiving treatment at a
government-funded, military-run Internet Addiction
Treatment Center in Beijing's Daxing county.
After a China National Children's Center
(CNCC) report that claimed 13% of Internet users
under the age of 18 were addicted to the Internet
set off alarms, online addiction has emerged as
the focus of a concerted campaign by the Chinese
government to battle what the Chinese Communist
Youth League calls "a grave social problem" that
threatens the nation.
The number of
Internet users in China has spiked from virtually
zero in the 1990s to 137 million by the end of
2006. Of these, at least 15% are under the age of
18, and on the basis of the CNCC report, 2.3
million minors would be classified as addicts.
In the past few months, local media in
China have been awash with highly publicized cases
of obsessed Internet game players flunking out of
school, with some committing suicide and even
murder. In 2005, a Shanghai court gave an online
gamer a life sentence after he was found guilty of
stabbing a competitor to death for stealing his
cyber-sword - a virtual prize earned during
game-play.
This in March, China's official
news agency Xinhua quoted a Beijing Reformatory
for Juvenile Delinquents report stating that
almost 35% of its detainees were "goaded into
committing crimes, mostly robbery and rape, by
violent online games or erotic websites".
The Daxing addiction-treatment center is
the first and largest of eight government-funded
"rehabilitation camps" set up around the country
to address the special needs of juvenile Internet
addicts. On average, the center houses 70-80
patients, although during school vacations, the
number of its wards can shoot up to 250.
The majority of the patients are between
14 and 18 years old, although the youngest to have
been treated at the center was 11. Ninety percent
are male and, according to Tao Ran, the center's
director, most are addicted to online games,
although Internet chat and online pornography and
gambling have also been known to cause addictive
behavior.
The center is part military boot
camp, part hospital and part juvenile detention
center. Treatment consists of a mixture of
psychological counseling, drugs and enforced
military-style discipline. Tao Ran says the center
can boast a 70% success rate, with most patients
needing a one-to-three-month course of treatment.
The treatment period can, however, be
tumultuous, since the majority of addicts are
involuntarily committed by their parents. The
dormitory areas are cordoned off with prison-style
metal grilles and hefty padlocks. Patients have
tried to escape. One even slashed his wrists,
although quick intervention allowed him to
survive.
Given its relatively recent
origins, the nature of Internet addiction remains
somewhat of a global controversy. At issue is
whether or not heavy Internet use should be
defined and treated as a mental disorder. Tao Ran,
who built his career treating heroin addicts in
the 1990s, has little patience for such debate.
He says that having researched and treated
a variety of addictions, both physical and
psychological, over two decades, he is convinced
that Internet addiction is virtually the same as
other more conventional addictions both in terms
of its symptoms and the negative impact it has on
the addict's ability to function normally in
society.
Thus if deprived of the Internet,
addicts can quickly turn nasty and resort to theft
and violence to secure money for use in Internet
bars. In addition, they often stop eating and
sleeping for days at a stretch, causing serious
harm to their health.
Tao Ran says the
patients that are brought to the clinic usually
suffer from a mixture of anger, loss of
self-esteem, depression, bad nutrition, insomnia
and lack of self-control. The military discipline
at the center helps them to regain a schedule and
builds up both their physical strength and mental
discipline. The intensive counseling aims
gradually to restore their sense of
self-confidence and help them to re-establish
positive goals for their lives. Some 30% of cases
are additionally treated with drugs, including
anti-depressants and even anti-psychotics.
According to Tao Ran, the underlying cause
for this trend of rising cyber-addiction is
unreasonable pressure from parents and schools to
excel in examinations. Unable to bear the constant
criticisms and expectations placed on them,
youngsters come to depend on the Internet as an
escape from real-world stress.
Sun Qian
Han, a 24-year-old patient at the Daxing center,
recalls, "For me, online games were an environment
that I could control and where there were no
restrictions placed on my freedom."
Sun
began to play Internet games in 1998. At the
beginning he spent only three or four hours a day
online, but gradually his addiction grew to
uncontrollable proportions. In 1999, he spent
three months non-stop at an Internet cafe,
sleeping three or four hours at most, playing
games for 20-hour stretches at a time.
An
excellent student, Sun dropped out of school,
although with his parents' support he finally
managed to graduate in 2005, four years later than
his contemporaries. Sun is currently enrolled at a
polytechnic college in Yunnan province, but every
few months he finds himself sliding back toward
the vortex of an online binge. He voluntarily
checked himself into the Daxing Center two weeks
ago, although it's his parents who foot the
US$1,200 monthly fee.
Over the past two
months or so, the Chinese government has announced
a host of measures it says are aimed at curbing
Internet addiction. These include an ordinance
issued in March banning the opening of any new
Internet bars in the country for the remainder of
the year. In addition, 'Net-bar owners have been
ordered to install anti-addiction software on
their computers and to be extra-vigilant in
collecting information on users, including their
real names, age and identity-card numbers.
Critics have charged that this campaign
meshes a bit too conveniently with China's broader
efforts to control the Internet. Access to many
major online international news sites is blocked
in China, and an estimated 50,000 personnel are
employed to monitor Internet traffic, censoring
information that is deemed too politically
sensitive by the government.
But Sun
believes the new measures will be helpful if they
are strictly implemented. His worry is that most
'Net-bar owners put profit first and are loath to
turn under-age users away or to implement any
regulations that would be detrimental to their
business.
"All of us addicts are above
average in our IQ," he said toward the end of the
interview. "But our talents and energy are wasted
by this addiction."
Sun intends to stay on
at the center for another few weeks before heading
back to his college in Yunnan. He is studying to
be a software engineer.
Pallavi
Aiyar is the China correspondent for The
Hindu.
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