“Always On” – Are Our Kids Addicted to the Internet?

We have all by now read the results from the Kaiser Family Foundation study about the fact that the average young American spends more than seven and a half hours a day using a smart phone, a computer, television or other electronic device.

These results caused us to ask – how is being “always on” impacting this generation of kids?  

Well, if you live in China this type of “behavior” may be labeled an internet addiction, for which the Chinese have a fairly radical cure called an Internet Addiction Camp.

“The Qihang camp promised to cure children of so-called Internet addiction, an ailment that has grown into one of China’s most feared health hazards.  The camp’s brochure claimed that an estimated 80 percent of Chinese youth suffered from it. Fifteen-year-old Deng Senshan seemed to be among them. He was once a top student, but his grades had plummeted over the past couple of years, and he had stopped exercising almost completely. He spent most of his time playing games like World of Warcraft at Internet cafés or on his desktop computer.”

The Chinese news media was filled with terrifying stories of WOW-crazed kids dropping dead or killing their parents, and Deng Fei and Zhou Juan worried that they might lose their only son to a technological demon they barely understood. So they were lured in by the camp’s pledge to end his “bad behavior.”

According to the article, parents have always worried about the pernicious impact of youth culture, whether from comic books, rock and roll, or videogames. But in China’s rigid, hypercompetitive society, the Internet explosion represents more than a disciplinary annoyance. It is seen as an existential threat. And that helps explain why treating kids with supposed Internet addiction has become a national obsession.

With over 300 institutions offering treatment for internet addiction – this has become a billion yuan industry in China. At the same time, these camps have become increasingly controversial after the incident of a teenage being beaten to death in a treatment center in Guangxi and other kinds of non-standard treatment methods that are purported to have caused physical and mental harm to many of the children sent to these institutions.

While China is taking a radical stand against internet addiction, a study released in early 2009 did highlight that teenagers who are preoccupied with their Internet time may be more prone to aggressive behavior.

“In a study of more than 9,400 Taiwanese teenagers, the researchers found that those with signs of Internet "addiction" were more likely to say they had hit, shoved or threatened someone in the past year.”

Recently, we have seen evidence that this type of behavior is on the rise.

• January 19, 2010 - Disconnected gamer stabs adoptive mother after she cut off the family’s internet service.  
• January 26, 2010 – Italian teenage stabs father in neck over PlayStation Game.

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