http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2007/02/22/china-stern-treatment-for-young-internet-addicts/
China doesn't mess around with people whose "souls are gone to the online world". As part of a nation wide campaign, people, mainly young between the ages of 12 and 24, are being forced into hospital treatment for internet addictions. These relatively new clinics use "a tough love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis, and mild electric shocks."
This is, by our standards, over the top (at least the electric shocks). But this does reflect a world wide phenomenon, which is my main interest in the story, of declaring any undesirable behavior as a mental disorder that can be treated with drugs as if it is diagnosable disease. Is personal responsibility, as a social imperative, going to be a thing of the past? It can’t be our fault if it is disease. Is drugging ourselves to perfection going to be the new world order? I find this trend to be very disturbing. We may criticize China for its harsh approach (on many levels and issues) in an attempt to achieve some sort of social and moral greatness. But no country compares to America in the levels of medicating our youth and adults in the same attempt.
Other approaches China is taking to tackle this “grave social problem” is banning kids from internet cafes and electronically booting them off online gaming after a 5 hour time limit. These seem like more reasonable approaches. But whatever happened to the parent’s ability to just pull the plug, and taking charge and responsibility for their child’s use of time. OK, maybe economic forces have changed the family structure disallowing quality time with our children. I’m looking forward for the new drug that will allow us to get away with only one hour of sleep per day. That should solve everything.
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4 comments:
LOL! Funny last line.
Responsibility, Matthew, is a thing of the past. No one is accountable anymore (so it seems). Those certainly are drastic measures to curtail Internet use, and hope to deprogram young people.
Look at Hollywood, for an example. Britney Spears and hundreds of others will blame their bad behavior on alcohol and drugs, spend a month in rehab, and call it good. They think by appeasing the public that they've been "cured," they're not responsible for their actions any more. Personally, I call BS on that.
People need to be accountable, and with the state that our social society is in, I seriously doubt that will ever happen. Unfortunately.
Mild electrical shock? Seems a little intense to me. Maybe instead of shocking people they should help them get involved in other activities in their community or help them discover hobbies to entertain themselves with instead. Oh I have a great idea, maybe they could get a job!! It seems like everything is a disease these days, I guess we can add Internet addiction to the list.
Mao Zedong said that to have power you need two things: the gun and the pen ... The Communist Party has the gun, but the Internet is now the pen. If they lose control of it, something will happen to challenge their authority." --Guo Liang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, in an interview with CPJ.
Could this not be a scare tactic for the Chinese government against the use of the World Wide Web? I am not that knowledgeable on world affairs, but I have heard China has a real problem with speech against the government on the internet. It is something they have a real challenge controlling. So, to make a SARS like epidemic concerning the use of the internet might help them get a little bit of a handle on it. That's my conspiracy theory though.
I'm wondering what is the criteria to be considered an internet addict. In patient rehab and electrical shock for a behavioral problem seem like a quick fix. I would think this is more of a sociocultural problem and prevention, education and parents need to monitor and model appropriate internet and technology use. I agree with Melissa's conspiracy theory! If the government and medical associations are as connected as they are here the government could be using this internet addiction to control the flow of information and intimidate the younger generation.
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