China is the first country to label Internet addiction a clinical disorder. But instead of shutting the laptop and going for a stroll, in China there are guarded boot camps intended to deprogram hooked teens.
We use the Internet daily. We rely on it. But there are some who are so addicted to it that they shun the tangible realm of reality for an online existence, exploring digital worlds and living a digital life to such an extent that the lines of what’s real and what isn’t become a blur.
The compulsive need to excessively be online has been the cause of scores of deaths. Some have died of exhaustion after playing online games for days on end, while in Korea, a couple spent so much time at an Internet café their three-month-old baby died as they neglected to feed it.
This addiction and social detachment is striking nationwide concern across China, so to stamp it out the country is putting teens into military-style camps where Internet addicts are kept behind bars, guarded by soldiers to go cold turkey.
In a documentary called “Web Junkies”, filmmakers Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia go behind the doors at the Daxong Camp in Beijing – one of China’s first of many rehab correctional facilities.
The film captures the expressionless faces of the teens, mostly males, dressed in camo uniform attending the three-to-four month “treatment”, which involves military physical training, medication, therapy sessions and controlled diet in order to reconnect them with society.
The addicts, who mostly are brought in against their will by their parents, stay in barren and bleak cells at night, completely cut off from electronics. Except when they are wired up to machines so psychologists can observe their brain activity. Then, during the day, they sit like specimens in front of a panel of doctors in white coats as they try to reprogram their subject.
One of the teens featured admitted to spending 300-hours bingeing on role-playing game World of Warcraft while another admitted ditching his duties to dedicate whole months to the game.
The documentary, which is being shown at the Sundance film festival, serves to highlight the psychological and physiological effects of the Internet , but also calls into question whether parents are simply using this “disorder” to blame all manner of social issues and behavioral issues.
Many will no doubt view this method of curing web addicts as extreme. Back in 2009 one camp in China, which was ran illegally, beat an attendee to death as part of his addiction treatment – although he was only described as using the Internet casually on weekends. This has now been shut down but it calls into question the sort of rehabilitation techniques being in the many camps out there.
This article originally appeared on News.com.au.