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Caught in the Web
By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-21 09:57
 China Central Television aired an investigative show last week about a problematic cure for Internet addiction. It focused on a doctor who uses electro-convulsive therapy to treat mostly teenagers sent in by their parents and guardians to achieve "behavioral correction", as the treatment is labeled at a Linyi, Shandong province, hospital. It was an excellent report that asked tough questions and touched on many technical issues. Yang Yongxin, the doctor in charge, admits his treatment has not been "verified" or "approved" by authorities, and the electroshock equipment he uses "has not been issued a government permit since 2000". Like many people I believe electroshock therapy does not heal on a permanent basis, but produces only fear and obedience. But then, I'm no expert. According to the American Psychiatric Association and the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the treatment does not cause brain damage in adults. Still, applying it to teenagers - without their consent - seems cruel. Strangely, what has followed is not a focus on the therapy, but on the syndrome. Internet addiction is being disputed. "Is Internet addiction an addiction after all?" is the title of an essay by Leung Man-tao, an influential Hong Kong-based commentator. "This provides a medical excuse to suppress the Internet world, just as people in ancient times set fire to lepers and killed them," writes Hecaitou, a well-known blogger.
Both are potent voices in the so-called "liberal" camp. Leung, who I respect, basically equates extended Internet use with addiction. He says that in the early days of the Internet he cautioned himself not to lose touch with the real world, but later realized the Internet "is the world". He goes on to list many uses of the Internet, such as online shopping. Either Leung has never been inside an Internet caf or he has mixed two deceptively similar activities. Let's suppose a 16 year old, whom we'll call John for the sake of convenience, spends 10 hours a day in cyberspace. That is excessive to most people, who have eight-hour workdays. Scenario one: John spends two hours researching his essay assignment, culling online newspapers and magazines for relevant content, three hours writing the essay, during which time he constantly consults online dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopedias. Then he spends two hours watching a movie on a video site, one hour sending and receiving messages and about two hours playing an online game, with a few extra minutes shopping for a gift for his mother's birthday. Scenario two: John spends eight hours playing an online game and two hours on an instant messaging system. From Leung's article, it is clear he is defending scenario one, while many deem scenario two as problematic. If you simply take a photo of two adolescents typing away at a computer, you cannot tell the difference. But if you spend a whole day during the summer vacation with him, you will have a gut feeling whether his habit is healthy or not. When we say "Internet overuse", it's not just the amount of time spent online, but whether it is obsessive. Scenario one is relatively normal because John has a schedule that accommodates several activities, many of which are educational. Scenario two, if it continues over months and years, is detrimental, at least in my mind, because it excludes variety and choices of activities, provides only escape and diversion and is not job related or productive. Now, I totally understand that many games are both fun and educational. Even those purely for "amusement" can train eye-hand coordination, dexterity of response, strategizing, and so on. But then I'll be getting into a whole new area beyond the scope and length of this article. There are many reasons why Internet addiction exists. But to deny its existence is to see no evil and hear no evil. Maressa Orzack of the Computer Addiction Study Center at Harvard University's McLean Hospital determined in 2005 that between 5-10 percent of American Web surfers "suffered some form of Web dependency". Here, a 2005 survey concluded that, among young Internet users, 13.2 percent fell into the category. Most media reports put the number of addicts at 20 million. |
