chinascripts

internet addiction clinic

When China has a problem the first port of call is the Military


This is Beijing Military Hospital's 6 am wake up call and Qing is the
first to respond. These patients are not victims of war, but of a new
disease emerging in a time of prosperity.


The young men who are treated here are addicts; most are addicted to
playing Internet games, and some to on-line chat rooms ...
pre-occupations that have cost them their studies, their health, even
their sanity.


Wang is being pumped with what the nurse calls a "calming fluid". Not
these boys nor their parents can know what it contains. Like all the
concoctions used in this clinic, it's contents are a military secret.
But some parents have become so worried they are willing to trust this
authority to save their child.


30% of addicts in this ward are here because they became violent, too
caught up were they in their virtual worlds. Qing is one of them. He
has been playing games on-line for the last 4 years. He was brought
here by his parents when he tried to stab one of his classmates.


I had no way to solve my problems, and no place to release myself so I
went on-line. I often quarrelled with my parents and sometimes we hit
each other.


The clinic claims to cure 80% of its patients. But one day's treatment
here costs a quarter of your average Beijing monthly salary. This is
treatment for the most privileged.


Tao Ran is the clinic's mastermind. He aims to bring these young
people back to reality.


"Addicts often get angry, they become cold to emotions, only having
feelings for their on-line friends. They have no mood to do anything.
Here we use a combination of medical and psychological methods to
relieve out patients."


Tao Ran claims that Internet addiction is a serious disease and can be fatal.


"A 13 year old child jumped off a building and killed himself. From
reading his diary we can see that his mind merged between the real
world and the on-line world. He wrote that in the real world he is
rubbish. He thought that people can live and die and live again like
in a game".


Psychologists here say that one of the main factors behind Internet
addiction is the pressure Chinese parent's put on their children to
succeed.


One of these was Dai Ou. She used to obsess about her son's grades. If
he wasn't top of the class, it wasn't good enough. But when her son
dropped out of school, preferring a life on-line, she realised she had
pushed him too far:


"Parent's design a life for their child before he is even born, we
want our children to be the best, go to university and get a brilliant
job. Economic development means that only a minority can live really
well. We don't want our children to be the ones who don't survive. But
now we realise that if we let them be who they want to be, they would
not suffer so much."


These are China's new model workers, the yuppies that many a parent
wishes their child will become.


But in bedrooms across China's cities more and more young people are
letting their on-line identities dominate their lives, seeking escape
from the pressures that the new economic boom has brought to China.


It is at night when many sneak from their homes, or school
dormitories, to find their fix.


This is the reality of China's virtual world.


Officially Internet café's have midnight curfews, but this is 1am in
Beijing, and, like most of the other hundred thousand Internet cafes
in China, there is not an empty seat in the house.


Chinese people have always loved playing games. But this communal
street life is rapidly being lost in China's modern cities. Instead
communities are found on-line. On-line gamers form associations,
networks. Recently, on-line friends organised a cyber-funeral when one
of theirs died suddenly after spending consecutive days on-line in her
attempt to kill the Black Dragon Prince in this game. This obsession
is growing. A few months ago a man was sentenced to life imprisonment
for stabbing a 23 year old fellow gamer to death in a dispute over a
'dragon sword' in this on-line game. And Shan Xiuyun, a well known
judge in Beijing recently claimed 90% of juvenile crime in Beijing is
related to the Internet.


Though Beijing's military hospital may be helping these few, the
problem is widespread and deeper set. Qing does not think that 15 days
in this clinic will help him.


"The Internet is just a tool not a cause of the problem. Change needs
to happen across society. For us teenagers the pressures from school
and from home are just too much. There is no place to escape. At home
we don't have any brothers and sisters, as soon as our parents open
their mouth they say 'achieve, achieve'. Classmates strive against one
another. The Internet is virtual - it is the only place to escape".


China's commercial revolution has disrupted society. More freedoms
have been found, but at what price?

posted by poppy @ 3:57 PM