Signs of a possible internet addiction… |
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| The opening paragraph of this article is great, so I’ll just paste it here: |
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| DAXING, China - Sun Jiting spends his days locked behind metal bars in this military-run installation, put there by his parents. The 17-year-old high school student is not allowed to communicate with friends back home, and his only companions are psychologists, nurses and other patients. Each morning at 6:30, he is jolted awake by a soldier in fatigues shouting, “This is for your own good!” |
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| Sun’s offense: Internet addiction. |
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| Apparently, the Chinese government is really worried about their citizens’ internet habits, so they took the offensive by creating these internet addiction treatment centers. Yep, they’re military-run installations, so they’re government-sanctioned, and right now there are eight of them across China. According to the article, the clinic in Beijing’s Daxing suburb hosts between 60 and 280 patients whose ages range from twelve to twenty-four. But at least they’re there voluntarily! Wait–most of them aren’t there voluntarily? Well, at least they’re not being hypnotized, electrically shocked, and fed drugs! Oh, that’s part of the treatment?! This sounds suspiciously like re-education a-la-The Manchurian Candidate to us. |
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| Let’s get a little more info on this. There are apparently 3 floors to the place: |
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| The first level has 10 locked rooms that are described as being for treating “teen patients suffering from disturbed sleep, lack of motivation, aggression, depression and other problems. It goes on: Unlike the rest of the building, which is painted in blues and grays and kept cold to keep the teens alert, these rooms are sunny and warm.” Oh, well at least they’re sunny and warm! Inside Room No. 8 are toys and other figurines that the teens can play with while psychologists watch. Room 10 contains rows of fake machine guns that the patients use for role-play scenarios that are supposed to bridge the virtual world with the real one. Yep, twenty-four-year-old guys love to play with toys and fake machine guns! Room No. 4 is made up to look like home, with rattan furniture and fake flowers, to provide a comfortable place for counselors to talk to the teens. The staff tries to blend into the artificial environment. Before meeting with a patient, one counselor swapped her olive military uniform for a motherly cardigan and plaid skirt. This is like the Darma Initiative-meets-Stepford. |
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| The second level strangely isn’t mentioned in the article, but the third level is: No one is comfortable talking about the third floor of the clinic, where serious cases — usually two or three at a time — are housed. Most have been addicted to the Internet for five or more years, Tao said, are severely depressed and refuse counseling. One sliced his wrists but survived. These teens are under 24-hour supervision. That’s just plain freaky. |
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| But hey, the clinic helps people, right? The article goes on to explain the plans of Sun Jiting, one of the patients soon getting out of the “treatment program”: |
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| The first task on his agenda when he gets home: get online. He needs to tell his worried Internet friends where he was these past few weeks. |
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| What’s the Chinese word for irony? |
