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Chinese Centers Respond to Rising Web Addiction With Tough Love

by Lee Bains on January 13, 2009 at 02:43 PM



While modernizing agents and consumer culture are descending upon China, some of the country's people have found the changes to be too much to bear; at present, as many as 17 million Chinese people, around five percent of Chinese Internet users, are addicted to the Web, treatment center director Dr. Tao Ran told Australia's NineMSN.

Considering there are 300 Chinese treatment centers bent on addressing Web addiction, there is certainly some weight to Dr. Tao's high figures. To be included in the ranks of Web addicts, Dr. Tao believes, an individual should spend more than six hours a day online, in activities unrelated to professional or academic pursuits. Many, he points out, are addicted to online games.

In response to this daunting problem, treatment centers like Tao's are going to rather serious lengths, treating patients with 'nanometer wave machines,' strenuous military exercise programs and even electric shocks.

While Chinese experts are ready to meet the problem head-on, their Western counterparts continue to debate the characteristics -- and even the existence -- of Internet addiction. [From: NineMSN]

Tags: addiction, china, expire-images2010-1-12, expire-images2010-1-13, web

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