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China's Internet Addiction Clinic 265

Posted by CmdrTaco from the time-for-an-intervention dept.
An anonymous reader writes "China has decided that if you are spending too much time online, you must be an addict. They've just opened a clinic to treat these internet addicts. Scarier is the head gear they have one patient hooked up to, and the fact that they think that this is some sort of epidemic and will shortly be expanding and adding 200 more beds to their clinics. In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day. " We also covered this story last july.
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China's Internet Addiction Clinic More

China's Internet Addiction Clinic

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  • Scarier is the head gear they have one patient hooked up to

    Imagine how the gear would be, when they realize that its not the head thats messed up ;)

  • Gonna have to face it....you're addicted to DUPES (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @11:58AM (#13765489)

    Story is a dupe...original story can be found here [slashdot.org].

    I'm not complaining, mind you...the original story garnered a scant 31 comments, so I'm glad to see it posted again. I'm especially glad to see the pic of the bizzare headgear composed of equal parts ignition wiring and surgical tubing...I have a new wallpaper!

    Seriously, though, from TFA:
    Wang Yiming, 21, is a self-confessed internet addict, one of a growing number in China. He used to spend hours online each day, often going without food or sleep. His face is drawn and sallow.
    I went through the same thing during my big MUD/MUSH phase back in the early 90's...14+ hours online every day of the week, and I was losing weight because I was forgetting to eat. But you know what? Somehow, I survived, and I didn't need some scary nurse wrapping my head in neo-bondage gear to do it. This 'clinic' is selling digital snake oil...nothing more.
  • So it is not an addiction if you visit coffee house after coffee house.

    But it is an addiction if you visit internet chat rooms after chat rooms.

  • Fear mongering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hrodvitnir ( 101283 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:00PM (#13765505)
    If you think that being online can be addictive then you're less likely to surf around and read things the government doesn't want you reading.

    • Re:Fear mongering (Score:5, Insightful)

      by robertjw ( 728654 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:18PM (#13765696) Homepage
      Good point. I think too many of us are naieve to the propaganda a government can put out. This could very well be an attempt to slow growing internet use or at least make tech geeks that spend hours on the net reading western news stories and subversive content look bad.
  • what is scary is the liklihood that drug companies will find a pill to cure you of the addiction to the Internet. All they have to do is find a compound that not only makes you not want to surf the Internet, but also has viagra side effects. Yes, scary, but then the *AA will be supporting it too because you won't want to download illegal copies of stuff. With a market the size of China, what drug company can resist the lure of selling 2 pills per day to half a billion people?

    Yes, I think the fears of certai
    • An impotence-inducing pill will cure 90% of "internet addiction" ;)
    • what is scary is the liklihood that drug companies will find a pill to cure you of the addiction to the Internet

      Depending on the individual, there are already pills for that. MDMA, Xanex, valium, hydrocodone, morphine, etc work on a decent range of people.

      Kidding aside, this is not a medical problem that a pill can fix.

      Addictions are an avoidance, they are not the problem in themselves. They are learned behavior that requires a relatively short time for reinforcement. To my knowledge, people do not get a
    • There is an old anti-depressant like this.

      Trazodone, an old medication generally used for sleeplessness these days, has the annoying habit of causing priapism.

      Or, so I heard from a... friend.
  • Better? I don't think so.

  • Not a new concept.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:02PM (#13765533) Homepage Journal
    Back when I was traveling through Brugge, Belgium in 1994 I met a couple who counseled those addicted to BBS's. I imagine they are quite busy still.

  • Relative comparison is irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)

    by koniosis ( 657156 ) <koniosisNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:02PM (#13765534)
    the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.


    And gambling is also way better than alchol or drugs any day, does this mean these things shouldn't be treated? Judging the seriousness of problems on a relative basis isn't going to help anyone.

    • Re:Relative comparison is irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:31PM (#13765822)
      Actually, gambling addiction is a really big problem in Chinese communities. So much so that gambling addicts who destroy their careers and families feature a lot in HK TV shows, much more so than drug addicts or even alcoholics. Strangely enough, at the same time, gambling is idolised - often in the same TV shows with the gambling addicts. I guess Chinese just love gambling. Now that I think about it, my family (which is Chinese) taught us kids how to gamble before we even started school :) I guess it's a good way to learn your numbers and basic maths...I strongly suspect gambling is a much bigger problem than internet addiction in China.

      The main problem I suspect is the internet cafes. If the computer is at home, the parents can control its use (by force if necessary). However, with internet cafes it is out of the parent's control. Now that I think about it, it has the potential to be worse than gambling as gambling at least is constrained by money.

  • Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jazman ( 9111 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:04PM (#13765540)
    > They've just opened a clinic...
    > We also covered this story last july.

    So have they just opened the clinic or not?

  • Internet Addiction Clinic! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jimberini ( 444533 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:04PM (#13765545)
    Cool...do they have a website? how 'bout an RSS feed?
  • "We also covered this story last july."

    I see dupe addiction is spreading amongst the editors with Zonk being paitent zero. When will we see a clinic for that?

  • Please report for re-education (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:06PM (#13765564) Homepage Journal
    In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    You couldn't be more wrong. Alcohol and drugs suppress your higher brain functions, as well as your desire to do anything but get more alcohol and drugs. Properly managed, you will continue to be a loyal servant of the state, since we produce the alcohol and tolerate the drugs.

    Excessive use of the Internet, on the other hand, could lead to independent thought, social instability, and rebellion.

    Please report to Minitrue immediately.
    • I am SO glad that I DON'T have mod points now because I would have made a knee jerk mod and have modded you down. Then I would have HAD to post under my user name to have ALL of my mods backed out - out of fairness.

      I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I think that by doing the bulk of my reading on the net, I'm losing something. I think it's because most of the writing on the net is for 12 year olds and under. There are, of course some exceptions [salon.com]. It's the same as watching too much TV as opposed

    • Excessive use of the Internet, on the other hand, could lead to independent thought, social instability, and rebellion.

      The key word is "could". More often than not though, if you're online excessively then you're not doing the other thing you should be doing. You're not getting much excercise sitting infront of a screen, and are probably ingesting more "fast foods" since healthier stuff takes time to prepare/buy... not to mention your social life is most likely suffering.

      When you look at those that shaped s

    • Re:Please report for re-education (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      could lead to independent thought
      omg lol
    • "Excessive use of the Internet, on the other hand, could lead to independent thought, social instability, and rebellion."

      Or it leads to playing WoW all day every day and you turn in to a vegetable. You will also do anything the state demands of you as long as they provide high internet access and long stretches of uninterrupted game time.

      If you've player WoW lately you know that it is increasingly being overrun by Chinese, many of whom are making a living off it farming and reselling gold on assorted web s
    • Suppress your higher brain functions? You maybe need to re-examine your propaganda-based beliefs. Suppressing your desire to do anything but get more alcohol and drugs? What are you smoking? That's just addictive behavior, and the only reasons drugs are so correlated with it is because they're the lowest common "feel-good" denominator (well, along with sex). Boy, people sure waste a lot of time having sex, I guess we'd better outlaw it before it becomes an epidemic.

      You are the screaming stereotype of the

  • Addiction (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:07PM (#13765582)
    If your spending so much time on the internet, that you end up not eating, losing your job, or failing out of school, then it is a problem that should probably be addressed. Most of the stuff on the internet is just a big waste of time. It's probably one of the hardest addictions to kick too. There's very little money required to spend every hour of your life online, not to mention that nobody (meaning the cops) really tries to stop you from spending your entire life online. Also, it's possible to get to a point where you're really addicted, without anyone else noticing.

  • China == Borg (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 0xABADC0DA ( 867955 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:08PM (#13765586)
    Because they learn from their mistakes and adapt. China *was* the asian superpower before the West destroyed them by addicting them to opium. Looks like they aren't going to let that happen again... time to print out a certain 38-dimensional figure?
    • China *was* the asian superpower before the West destroyed them by addicting them to opium.

      I realize blanket statements are easier to type, but ffs include at least some specific facts.... First, you're talking about 19th century pre-revolution China, a substantially different country from today's communist China both politically and socially. Secondly, it was almost exclusively the British that fostered the opium market in the far east. Other "West" countries played much smaller roles, in fact the United S

  • Depends on your Definition of Safer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LexNaturalis ( 895838 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:08PM (#13765587)
    Granted, most people don't go out killing folks on account of the internet (with some exceptions of course), but an "addiction" to the internet can be extremely damaging nonetheless. Whilst I was in HS I saw my grades drop from straight A's to C's and D's because I was online so much I didn't do any homework or studying. So basically I had no social life (unless you count chat rooms and the like) and wasn't very productive at all. Of course, I managed to beat my own addiction by just setting limits when I actually went to college, and I graduated Salutatorian and got married. I obviously agree that Internet addiction is real, and I can realt personally to Wang Yiming in TFA. I don't really think you need a clinic though, but maybe.

    Addiction [wikipedia.org] that stems from the mind, and not drugs, is a real thing. I had a college professor who was addicted to running and the "high" it gave him. It got to the point of being unhealthy. Right now, I'm only mildly skeptical of the clinic, but from TFA it doesn't seem that China is "Forcing" people to go, so if a person feels they should voluntarily submit themselves to treatment then I say more power to them. Recognizing an addiction is really the first step. I'm sure, just because this is China, that people will react strongly to it, but I'd wager that at least a few /.'ers suffer similar addictions to the internet. Just my two cents.

    • Idle curiosity... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sczimme ( 603413 )

      Whilst I was in HS I saw my grades drop from straight A's to C's and D's because I was online so much I didn't do any homework or studying. So basically I had no social life (unless you count chat rooms and the like) and wasn't very productive at all.

      Idle curiosity: where were your parents/guardians while this was happening? Why wasn't anyone guiding you during your formative years? This is a bigger looming problem than the perils of [alleged] "Internet addiction".
    • Addiction [wikipedia.org] that stems from the mind, and not drugs, is a real thing. I had a college professor who was addicted to running and the "high" it gave him.
      That addiction also stems from drugs, as prolonged exertion causes the body to release endorphins, mild pain-killers.

  • What about... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mustafap ( 452510 )
    If they want something to worry about, they should consider smoking. China must have the highest smoking ratio outside of a Huntingdon Beagle Lab.

  • Drugs and Booze (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:09PM (#13765607) Homepage
    I don't know if it's safe than drugs and booze... to yourself at least. I've had a lot of good times with drugs and booze, and I don't feel any the less for it. As long as you aren't driving, more power to you. Same goes for being online all day, more power to you, but there was a point in my life when I couldn't stand straight, my neck was always cricked, I got fat, my sleeping schedule was completely fucked, and I didn't have a social life at all. I really do believe it hurt me a lot more than booze and alcohol ever did.

    LS

  • Internet addictions always safer? (Score:4, Informative)

    by vorpal22 ( 114901 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:10PM (#13765615) Homepage Journal
    In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    I dunno about you, dude, but I've know people who have spend hours and hours of their time online because of their net addiction, often going to bed at 4:00 AM because they're so busy IMing. I've had friends fail out of school and lose their jobs because of this. I've never had a friend of mine lose their job because they smoked pot; even the most pot-addicted of them (and trust me, I know a few) are reasonably functional, and probably healthier than those people who stay up until 4:00 eating junk food and then getting little sleep and complaining about their "insomnia".

  • Not surprising. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by slashdotnickname ( 882178 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:12PM (#13765631)
    This is what happens when you starve people of both information and their ability to express opinions. It's no different from when people dying of thirst are suddenly given a huge supply of water... they'll drink in dangerously excessive amounts.
  • In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    But drink and drugs can be a lot more fun and can involve bumping into real life horny drunken girlies and having even more fun.

  • Depends... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Franklinstein ( 909568 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:13PM (#13765648)
    "In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day."

    You know, that really depends on what you mean by "safe". I'm not arguing the alchohol so much as the smoking pot. You see, net addiction leads to sleep deprivation which is INCREDIBLY unhealthy, often times poor diet decisions and bad hygene and perhaps one of the biggest problems is the social issues it causes.

    You see, alchohol and pot tend to be more "social" vices (yeah, you have your closet boozers and potheads, but the vast majority of people use it socially), which has you interacting with people in the flesh versus the net where you interact via a screen.

    Physical human face to face contact is something all humans need, and I would worry about the long term mental health consequences of net addiction...especially since I myself have suffered from it.

    • Wow, I didn't think anyone could make a sincere sounding rebuttal to that. Very impressive.

      But I'm trying to wrap my head around the claim that internet addiction somehow leads to poorer hygene and sleep habits than addictions to alcohol or pot. I suspect that will be difficult to show, especially if as I suspect, it isn't true.

      You see, alchohol and pot tend to be more "social" vices (yeah, you have your closet boozers and potheads, but the vast majority of people use it socially), which has you interac

  • That's not the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DarkHand ( 608301 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:16PM (#13765674)
    In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day

    But alcohol and drugs don't expose you to the concept of freedom and independance. What they're really trying to stop is the influx of such ideas.
    • "Reeducation" has quite a history in China. The word Brainwashing [wikipedia.org] entered English in the 1950s, from Chinese in the 1950s, due to the sucess of these techniques.
    • *folds you a tinfoil hat*

      I've known people who ended up in psychiatry because of "internet addiction" as they became isolated and consumed by "the internet". Everything around them falls away and stops to matter, causing circular behaviourism; The online life being more "pleasant", "safe" or "better" and is experienced as something "they have control over", which they might feel they lack in reality.

      In that sense, it hasn't got anything to do by limiting information, but by underlaying reasons or by '

  • Scarier is the head gear they have one patient hooked up to,

    If someone gave me electo-shock "therapy" I know I would stop using the Internet. In fact I think I will stop now just in case. No carrier....

  • They also have freedom addiction clinics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:22PM (#13765739)
    In a "perfect" totalitarian state only the insane can disagree with the state.


    China's Psychiatric Terror [nybooks.com]


    At its triennial congress in Yokohama last September, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) overwhelmingly voted to send a delegation to China to investigate charges that dissidents were being imprisoned and maltreated as "political maniacs" both in regular mental hospitals and in police-run psychiatric custodial institutions known as the Ankang. (The word literally means "Peace and Health.")



    The psychiatrists who staff these institutions, Dangerous Minds shows, tend to assume that their patients are mad because of their political beliefs or actions. The diagnoses made in both the political dissident and Falun Gong cases, ranging from "delusions of reform" to "paranoid psychosis," are highly reminiscent of the long-discredited label of "sluggish schizophrenia" that the Soviets used to apply to their dissidents and religious nonconformists.



  • Will the hospital have free WiFi?
  • China, the bastion for personal freedom in the eastern hemisphere [amnesty.org], doesn't have a history of modifying the normal behaviour of its citizens. I'm frankly very surprised and dismayed that this is taking place.

    And yes I'm being mostly sarcastic.
  • The submitter's comment sounded like he was trying to legitimize and downplay his own internet addiction by saying "Oh, well at least it's better than drugs and alcohol." I spend a large amount of time on my computer for both work and play, but I still make time to socialize in real life. Drugs and alcohol are used by addicts as an escape from their everyday lives. How is spending 16 hours a day on the internet any different than that? It's just a new medium of escape and should be taken seriously.

    There hav
  • Living in Japan and with a little knowledge of (South) Korea, it's interesting to compare those relatively free socities to China. There are defintely internet addicts in both countries and while there might be a social stigma on that (defintely in Japan, despite the recent run of Densha Otoko a soap about an internet romance). But indidivuals are relatively free to decide how to spend their leisure time. Moreover, they have access to the wealth of information on the Net.

    Whereas in China, this hole into
  • China has decided that if you are spending too much time online, you must be an addict.

    Makes you wonder. Oriental cultures have a distinctly different approach to social arrangement. And in America, we've seen more than enough people devolving their lives with playing EQ, indulging in chat rooms in lieu of real socialization, ditching husbands, wives and lovers for "true life mates" they meet online, etc.

    Often enough, I look at my own life and wonder if I haven't made a bad trade by investing time
  • In my opinion, the internet is way better [...] than alcohol and drugs any day

    Dude. get to a clinic.

  • It's a bigger problem in Japan (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:28PM (#13765798) Homepage
    This is an even bigger problem in Japan, which is rich enough to afford young people idle for years.

    The lack of social contact and prolonged solitude has a profound effect on the mentality of the hikikomori, who gradually lose their social skills and the necessary social references and mores of the outside world. Anguished about their isolation and acutely self aware of their problem, they immerse themselves into the fantasy worlds of manga, television or computer games, which in turn becomes their only frame of reference. As time passes, the hikikomori, lacking interpersonal stimulus, developmentally stagnates into routine behaviors of sleeping all day and staying up all night only to sneak out into the kitchen for food when the family is asleep. Eventually, hikikomori may abandon their diversions of books and TV and simply stare into space for hours at a time. -- Wikipedia, "hikikomori" [wikipedia.org]

    It's such a big problem in Japan that the birth rate has dropped substantially. [usatoday.com]

    • no, change in women's lifestyle is main cause of declining birth rate: women working and having activities other than procreating, helped in part by birth control, but also just not the desire to be stuck at home raising babies.
  • The internet addicts go on a two-week course involving medical treatment, psychological therapy, and daily workouts. The latter are a key part of the programme. Many of the men have spent every waking moment in front of a computer screen and have never experienced regular exercise.
    Dr Tao Ran, head of the clinic, said the scale of the problem in China was enormous:
    "Every day in China, more than 20 million youngsters go online to play games and hit the chat rooms, and that means that internet addiction a
  • Benzos like valium, xanax and klonopin are also considered addictive, but they're quite safe in that the worst that could happen is that you sleep a lot but you will not hit a lethal level (unless you take so many your stomach exploads, like in Se7en with the fat guy). Yes I know if you put barbiturates into the picture, like booze, it's a different story, but if you mix internet addiction with smashing your head into the monitor constantly it can be fatal as well; so the alcohol mixture point doesn't nulli
  • This smells like a scam to me. If they think Internet addiction is a problem, where were they with television and radio addiction, phone addiction, newspaper reading addiction, or for that matter Mah Jong addiction? I don't know what their equivalent of Congress is, but they must have corresponding equivalents for hey Senator, nice to see you, oops, you dropped this envelope full of $100 bills, wink wink.
  • Do they have a web site?

  • A Clockwork Orange, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @12:42PM (#13765922) Journal
    Is it only me here seeing a more-than-slight resemblence between this [bbc.co.uk] and this [georgetown.edu]?

  • I'm seeing so many comments about how the concern about internet addiction is some vast Chinese government conspiracy designed to put people off the internet so that they can't be exposed to new ideas. How about a simpler explanation? That parents are just concerned for their kids? You know you get fears about internet addiction in the West as well. Chinese parents generally take a very controlling attitude to their children's lives. I can definitely see them falling for a clinic scam as well. Chinese
  • "Neducation Center: Where The Elite Meet To Have Their Spirits Broken"

    "Oh! I see by the Big Board we got a Negative Nellie in Sector Two. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask the whole family to kind of freeze and prepare for Re-Neducation!"

    I'm Wen Jiabao and I approved this message.

  • You take a people who have been denied non-propagandized news sources all their lives, and hand them an information tool so rich that the government can't effectively stop ALL the light from getting through, and they eat it up.

    I wonder if they would treat people who read for 4 hours a day for paper addiction.
  • The party in power is scared of the internet and the freedom other people have in other country it can divulge. Attaching a blanket stigma to all internet users makes it easier to dismiss any idea or concept read on the www.

    China's powerful want to keep control of their population as much as possible. This is only another way to achieve this goal.

  • Headgear (Score:4, Funny)

    by bokmann ( 323771 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @01:11PM (#13766193) Homepage
    The headgear looks pretty cool... is it some kind of new game interface? Where do I get it?

  • "the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day"

    SPeak for yourself...
  • From TFA:He used to spend hours online each day, often going without food or sleep. His face is drawn and sallow.

    Could someone explain the difference between the above statement, and those used by Comp Sci, and Engineering students nearing assignment due dates and exams?

    I remember taking two courses in the same semester that everyone warned me about not taking in the same semester. That resulted in me "often going without food or sleep" in an effort to make deadlines. I entered the semester a healthy stud

  • Mental Health Treatment and Totalitarian Countries (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jenkin sear ( 28765 ) * on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @01:21PM (#13766267) Homepage Journal
    Totalitarian countries- which China aspires to, although they cannot achieve it at the moment- have historically used mental health as a way to subjugate and control dissidents. No stalinist or maoist show trial was complete without a learned doctor explaining that the defendant was almost certainly crazy (and if they weren't, they probably would be by the time the train got back from Siberia). Mental health hospitals were used as prisons for a special class of criminal- those who committed thoughtcrime. These "clinics" are nothing more than an extension of this totalitarian approach.

    It's not surprising that China is undergoing an internal struggle over how to handle the internet- the net is the most obvious disease vector for thoughtcrime there could be. It's also the key to unlocking China's economic potential, allowing much simpler commercial integration with the rest of the world. It's hard for the authorities to keep a lid on it- no matter how much companies like google, cisco, and yahoo willingly participate in selling freedom down the river.

    I suspect that this is intended to be a warning to dissidents- 200 beds in China won't be terribly effective- and perhaps a symbol for the other members of the politburo as to how sincere their sponsor is in his willingness to crush dissent, particularly people who dare to post anything of significance on their blogs.

    These guys don't play games, they kill people.

  • I doubt it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cereal Box ( 4286 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2005 @01:23PM (#13766275)
    I doubt the existence of this clinic. I've noticed that all these "internet addiction" or "man plays online for days straight and dies" stories come out in regular intervals and only from Asian countries. If anything, I would say that these stories are fabricated by the governments of said countries and picked up as fact by other news agencies.

    It's just propaganda, nothing more. Look at the headgear that guy's got on. What purpose could it possibly serve in curing "internet addiction"? Methinks the story and the pictures serve to scare the populace from excessive computer use (assuming they actually take these stories seriously).
  • Does that head gear include a looping recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony?

    Hmm...let's compare: Clockwork Orange [georgetown.edu] to Chinese Internet Addict Clicnic [bbc.co.uk]

  • The headgear looks like an EEG (electro encypphalogram) probe to me. In other words, it is used to measure brain voltages. Probably to see which portions of the brain are active while you perform specific actions. Maybe there is an 'addiction-region' in the brain or so? Anyway it does not look unreasonable to use it and it doesn't hurt.
  • Unlike USSR, people actually believe the Chinese government this time. It shows how far in the past USSR is when kids now believe in such a thing as internet addiction. Or maybe it isn't the distance in time but our dissatisfaction with capitalism that makes us want to believe in China's government.

    Maybe the political divisiveness in the western world is so great that we want to believe China's state news is for real and it really doesn't have a terrorist problem. We want to believe that a centrally run
  • I sometimes wonder how much of this is a drive by a medicine industry to seek out new diseases and develop cures for them. The United States certainly isnt immune from this tendency. Half of the commercials on news shows seem to be for "diseases" of little concern a decade or more ago.
  • In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    In my opinion, marijuana is way better and safer than alcohol and other drugs any day.

    In my opinion, prescription pills are way better and safer than alcohol and other drugs any day.

    In my opinion, sex is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    In my opinion, extreme sports are way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.

    You'd better watch it, you yourself could be an addict :)

  • I was on a web board the other day where someone asked the owner to temporarily ban her because she couldn't control herself enough to take a break and stay away from the board.

    Given that we are talking about the PRC I suspect a sinister motive, bu t whether it is addiction or just compulsion I think there might be something beyond just the sinister motive.
  • Anyone who believes those clinics are supposed to treat Internet addiction, is just sooo naive. They are to eliminate the democratic opposition, just as the USSR used to put its dissidents into asylums. It will be very easy to say "he spends too much time on the Internet" (it being an important means of communication for every self-respecting dissident) and put him/her in the clinic, for "treatment".
  • I have thoughts about this, but I'll post them when I get my hunter to level 51...

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