How to treat Net addiction creatively

In Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, young patients live in guarded cells behind walls topped with barbed wire. They take medication, participate in therapy and adhere to a physical and dietary regimen to treat their supposed disorder: Internet addiction. The problem and its alleged cures have become so great that in 2009, the Chinese government banned physical punishment to wean adolescents from the Internet and, before that, had outlawed the use of shock treatment to treat the disorder.

China was among the first countries to label "Internet addiction" a clinical disorder. The most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V, published in 2013) is the American Psychiatric Association's classification and diagnostic tool. In the United States, the DSM serves as a universal authority for psychiatric diagnosis. Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is not a recognized mental disorder in the DSM-V; gambling disorder is the only non-substance related addictive disorder.

However, that is not to suggest that the problem has been overlooked in the West. A Kindle book search for the term "Internet addiction" produces 117 titles such as "Internet Addiction: The Ultimate Guide for How to Overcome an Internet Addiction for Life" and "The Internet Addiction Cure - The Ultimate Guide To Help You Walk Away From The Computer". In addition to ultimate guides there are books such as I Was an Internet Addict, a digital diet four-step plan to break your addiction, books to help you recognize signs of Internet addiction, promising books to lead you away from addiction in 21 days, and books guaranteed to get you "Web sober".