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China's Internet Addiction Clinic
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.
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.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If they want something to worry about, they should consider smoking. China must have the highest smoking ratio outside of a Huntingdon Beagle Lab.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
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
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
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.
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.
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.
But then surely you admit that there is such a thing as Internet addiction, and that it can really mess up a person's life for a while. If it can be treated in some reasonable and effective way (which this clinic surely is not), then isn't such treatment a good idea?
It's not really useful to say 'Well hey, I got over it... so you addicts should just snap out of it!'
Of course, this kind of obsessive behavior is really new. But the Internet really does seem to have great potential to draw people into it. After all, in the days long before D&D and the Internet, you didn't see fantasy geeks spending 14 hours every day re-reading "Ivanhoe" or whatever.
The challenge is that the Internet is always available, and always ready to interact. It's like having a TV channel that always shows new episodes of your favorite progam. I'm glad that I don't have a problem with it, but I sympathize with those who do.
In my opinion, the internet is way better and safer than alcohol and drugs any day.
Addiction is where any behavior begins to affect how you live your life. I'm addicted to breathing, eating and sleeping, but I can live a normal life doing all of these things. It's when you do something to such an extent that it significantly harms your way of life. I've known people who by most measures were alcoholics. They drank all the time, waking up with a screwdriver, etc. But in the end, they functioned fine in their daily lives. Never lost a job, beat their kids, etc. They just drank a lot.
The same goes for Internet addiction. It's not being on the Internet a lot that's bad. It's when other things suffer for it. When you don't eat, don't sleep, don't socialize, etc, then it's a problem. And ultimately you have to decide if it's a problem for you. I'm on-line a lot myself. I work on-line, I go home, and maybe spend 2 or 3 hours on the average night not on-line, then I'm back on-line again. But in the end, I'm married, I get out and socialize with friends, I eat, I sleep, etc.
As for "healthier". Well sitting in one place all the time, eating junk food and pumping yourself with caffiene is probably not much better for you than drinking a lot, smoking, or doing harder drugs. Arguably more people kill themselves with Internet addiction than say marijuana. I've never heard of somebody dying after a four day streak of getting stoned.
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People get over smoking, drinking, and heroin on their own too. Some people. Others need help.
Recently computers are used in developing dangerous nuclear weapons.
WTF? Steel is also used in developing nuclear weapons. So is plastic and electricity. I should create a blog about the 'negative effects of using steel' I guess?
People are thrown out of their jobs due to the computerization. This has affected the working middle aged persons a lot.
People were thrown out of their jobs due to the invention of the printing press as well.Nowadays computers are misused by lots of people for sharing pornographic materials.
Better ban printed pictures as well. Oh, I guess cave-paintings are dangerous too.
In all seriousness, what is this ragtag group of drivel supposed to mean? I could come up with a simmiar list of the negative effects of useing oxygen.
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. It's the same as watching too much TV as opposed to reading. My spelling is turning to shit as a result too.
That's my $0.25 opppinion.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
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 society and it's thinking, they're usually people that strove for simplicity and hard work... like Gandhi sewing his own clothes, or Thoreau living amongst nature. Those are the things that help sharpen the mind the best. Dumping gigs of information into your brain is pointless if you can't properly process it.
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".
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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.
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 States had diplomatic agreements with China designed to help with the opium problem. This can still be seen in today's "War On Drugs", which back with the actions taken in the late 19th and early 20th century relating to the opium problems. And as damaging as opium was to China, the later communist revolution did just as much if not more damage to the country. Millions of Chinese people ended up starving because of the foolish programs from the early communist leaders.