Web Addiction
I'm always surprised at the huge numbers in China. Because of its humungous population, there are that many more people affected... I read this article in the September 2006 issue of BEIJING TODAY, an English newspaper published by the Beijing Youth Daily.
"Boot camp for young web addicts"
By Han Manman
China's first camp designed to help wean Internet addicts off their surfing addiction saw its graduates return home Wednesday from the center in Beijing's Daxing district.
Over 60 web addicted youths, selected from 900 applicants from across the country, completed the five day course of treatment, at a camp jointly organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, Central Civilization Office, and the General Administration of Press and Publication of China.
Zhang Wei, from the Youth League, said only eight youths volunteered for the camp, with the rest coming only after being forced by their parents [that means over 50 were forced...]. The Internet addicts, ages ranging between 12 and 23 years old, were all 'typical problem youths' with experience of drug addiction, web love, suicide attempts or running away from home, Zhang said. Some suffered from depression, and most have dropped out from school.
Five days in healthy fresh air and sunshine is a world away from the average young Internet addict's darkened bedroom. Zhang said the youths were divided into nine teams of seven. Each team had a doctor, a military trainer and a volunteer care worker. The five days of therapy included military training, watching movies and psychological counseling. The trainees also played a real-world version of the popular online first-person shooting game Counter-Strike [I know some of you are thinking: how cool would that be??!!].
"Playing real-world Counter-Strike helps the young people distinguish between real and virtual worlds," said Zhang. "At least one of the youths' parents was asked to join the training camp and receive training with their child, because a lot of web addiction in the young is down to a lack of understanding between children and parents." [the sentence is grammatically incorrect in the newspaper]
Zhang said some positive results were already apparent after the five days of treatment. Some of the young people seemed more willing to make friends and to communicate with their parents. "We also created video and document records for each family to make it easy for us to follow up on trainees' progress in the future," added Zhang.
The total number of the Internet users across the country hit 120 million by the end of this June, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The Internet's rising popularity is fueling concern that some surfers have become dangerously addicted to the Web.
According to Professor Tao Hongkai of Huazhong Normal University [I'm at Beijing Normal University!!!], who has conducted studies on Internet addiction, there are more than 10 million young Chinese people with problem surfing habits. In extreme cases, Internet addiction has been linked to psychological problems, violence against arents and crime. Many addicts drop out of school and become lost in a virtual world. Professor Tao said that online games have changed the fate of thousands of families and children.
*****
More than 10 MILLION with "problem surfing habits." Now, go figure what that actually means, but I can tell you that the internet bars around universities are packed in the evenings where I am at the moment. And so many of my male students last year spent entire nights at internet bars, playing internet games and then skipping class during the day. And this was a regular occurance. A Chinese friend and I were at a restaurant the other day and I remarked how bored a girl-sitting-at-another-table-with-two-guys looked. My friend told me the guys were talking about an online game, so of course she was bored....
I can totally understand how you can get lost in these kinds of games. When I was in high school my friends gave me a tetris-like computer game that I played for hours on end and even dreamed about the sequences I could make...and that's just a stupid tetris-like game!!! SimCity was pretty time-consuming too... I could see how people could get caught up in a game and not want to do anything else. It's like a good story that you keep wanting to get back to.
Oh well, glad I don't have that problem. :-)
Good night!
"Boot camp for young web addicts"
By Han Manman
China's first camp designed to help wean Internet addicts off their surfing addiction saw its graduates return home Wednesday from the center in Beijing's Daxing district.
Over 60 web addicted youths, selected from 900 applicants from across the country, completed the five day course of treatment, at a camp jointly organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, Central Civilization Office, and the General Administration of Press and Publication of China.
Zhang Wei, from the Youth League, said only eight youths volunteered for the camp, with the rest coming only after being forced by their parents [that means over 50 were forced...]. The Internet addicts, ages ranging between 12 and 23 years old, were all 'typical problem youths' with experience of drug addiction, web love, suicide attempts or running away from home, Zhang said. Some suffered from depression, and most have dropped out from school.
Five days in healthy fresh air and sunshine is a world away from the average young Internet addict's darkened bedroom. Zhang said the youths were divided into nine teams of seven. Each team had a doctor, a military trainer and a volunteer care worker. The five days of therapy included military training, watching movies and psychological counseling. The trainees also played a real-world version of the popular online first-person shooting game Counter-Strike [I know some of you are thinking: how cool would that be??!!].
"Playing real-world Counter-Strike helps the young people distinguish between real and virtual worlds," said Zhang. "At least one of the youths' parents was asked to join the training camp and receive training with their child, because a lot of web addiction in the young is down to a lack of understanding between children and parents." [the sentence is grammatically incorrect in the newspaper]
Zhang said some positive results were already apparent after the five days of treatment. Some of the young people seemed more willing to make friends and to communicate with their parents. "We also created video and document records for each family to make it easy for us to follow up on trainees' progress in the future," added Zhang.
The total number of the Internet users across the country hit 120 million by the end of this June, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The Internet's rising popularity is fueling concern that some surfers have become dangerously addicted to the Web.
According to Professor Tao Hongkai of Huazhong Normal University [I'm at Beijing Normal University!!!], who has conducted studies on Internet addiction, there are more than 10 million young Chinese people with problem surfing habits. In extreme cases, Internet addiction has been linked to psychological problems, violence against arents and crime. Many addicts drop out of school and become lost in a virtual world. Professor Tao said that online games have changed the fate of thousands of families and children.
*****
More than 10 MILLION with "problem surfing habits." Now, go figure what that actually means, but I can tell you that the internet bars around universities are packed in the evenings where I am at the moment. And so many of my male students last year spent entire nights at internet bars, playing internet games and then skipping class during the day. And this was a regular occurance. A Chinese friend and I were at a restaurant the other day and I remarked how bored a girl-sitting-at-another-table-with-two-guys looked. My friend told me the guys were talking about an online game, so of course she was bored....
I can totally understand how you can get lost in these kinds of games. When I was in high school my friends gave me a tetris-like computer game that I played for hours on end and even dreamed about the sequences I could make...and that's just a stupid tetris-like game!!! SimCity was pretty time-consuming too... I could see how people could get caught up in a game and not want to do anything else. It's like a good story that you keep wanting to get back to.
Oh well, glad I don't have that problem. :-)
Good night!
posted by Caro at 11:18 PM
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