Internet junkies kick habit in boot camp

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.