Slashdot Mirror
China Defines Internet Addiction
narramissic writes "Three years after the first clinic dedicated to Internet addiction opened in Beijing, Chinese doctors have now officially defined it as an ailment. Those afflicted with this ailment spend six or more hours a day online and exhibit at least one of the following symptoms: difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress. Do you meet the criteria? You're in good company: About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said."
Does this mean I am addicted?
I read that as "China Defends Internet Addiction".
I hear they also have a problem with youth in asia, but I've been assured that the government has the problem well in hand.
-
About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said.
News Anchor: And in today's news, an unnamed Chinese dissident has been treated in Beijing for <sinister sounding voice>internet addiction</sinister sounding voice>. After monitoring his internet usage and anti-government e-mails through his ISP, the government was able to find the man and get him the help he needs at a special government run institution at a remote location for his own good. Let's hope he has a swift recovery ...
My work here is dung.
I totally hope they have this in North America, I could totally go on workman's comp as my job requires me to be online all the time.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Ok, so I know we're all biased here, but let me be the first to say that, "I'm addicted to the internet".
I think they're on to something however I don't think people should be forced into camps over it. I'm not hurting anyone with my addiction including myself.
How to tell if you are addicted to Slashdot:
You your recent posting history has more posts than days.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
but seriously, I actually do meet most of the criteria, but I don't think I'm an "addict".
This is simply because my supposed "addiction" causes no harm to me, or the people around me. I use the Internet, mostly just www, but other stuff too, for work, studying and social interaction with far-away relatives.
I do know people who just waste away their lives online, but even most of them still manage to do their work just fine, and lead rewarding social lives.
I think someone made this point a long time ago in a comment: If you were as oppressed in your daily life as the Chinese, you might spend a lot of your time where you can be "free" in some form of context, social, MMO, whatever. It's not always about escape, there is also immersion and just plain wanting interaction. We all know that anything can become physically addictive, and whether or not some term is coined for those things or not, it's simply human nature at work.
The internet: it's way cheaper than opium, and way more effective at controlling the masses!
Each of which is all too easily inflicted at the hands of a PHB (cluelessly imposing impossible deadlines), without one single minute of WoW involved...
difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress.
Get a real addiction--I sucked dick for bandwidth!
Hi, I'm Jason, and I'm an addict. I have been an addict for many years now, I don't even keep track anymore. My days consist of sitting in a comfortable office chair staring at two 17" wide screen monitors, carelessly "surfing" (as us addicts call it) the internet. I need help.
*steps down from the e-podium, and sits back in his chair next to a smelly, neck bearded nix user*
Step 1 is admit your addiction... yup, i'm addicted.
Well if step 2 is submit to a higher authority.
Well, I have submitted to the power of Google.
Now leave me alone, I got me some good internet.
Seriously conflicted here. Addiction should never encompass anything that the bulk of society uses every day. I would imagine that the fundamental definition for any addiction should include a majority of negative repercussion, or at least that the addiction would cause the person's ultimate doom.
Look at alcoholism. Approximately 2% of alcoholics get Korsakoff's Syndrome, which ultimately destroys the person's sense of reality while Thiamine B6 is absent from the 3rd & 4th ventricle of the brain long enough for damage to erode/reconfigure brain cells. There is no parallel result in internet addiction, apart from mood swings and perhaps suicide attempts, but these are all mostly related to social mishaps online. Internet abuse does not cause anything like Korsakoff's.
Drug addiction, seems to all fit.
Alas, where a parallel could exist would be with sex addiction, although one could argue that the STD's cause your doom.
About the only thing Internet Addiction could cause is An Hero Syndrome (NSFW).
Medically, there could be serious degenerative disorders as a result of being fixated in one place for long periods of time, or perhaps dietary issues from eating and drinking the worst possible food in order to have more time online, but again that's all a bit of a stretch.
If I had to guess, I would say that the term Internet Addiction is a misnomer. This is more aptly that people who struggle to get back online crave attention because their own lives are sparse or deficient in areas of socialization, so they feel powerful online and therefore need it.
I think there is a long way to go on this subject and China's efforts, while interesting, are not quite there yet.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Or:
News Anchor: It's boring being in China, with a lot of old codgers running everything who believe in freedom only for themselves. That's why people spend so much time on the internet, the window to the outside world.
The Internet is simply ingrained into my life. Imagine a world without coffee. I wouldn't care much because I don't have a taste for it but I bet that millions will cry out in terror and will suddenly be silenced(faiting by lack of cafeine in their bloodstream :) ). Now imagine a world without the internet. I can't. I could. Around 10 years ago we got 33k dailup to get access to "this curious thing called the internet". We used it more and more untill one day we got a bill of 120+ eur and we knew it was time to switch to cable. Every since that moment I and the internet have been connected. If I want to look up an address or zipcode I go the right site and tada, zipcode and address. If I want to look up a term I go to Wikipedia, type the word in and tada, I've got the meaning and some deeper information about the subject. I check my mail every day to see if I have recieved any messages from people and institutions all over the world. If I want to know about technological development I visit tweakers.net or slashdot. I discuss on internetforums in many different countries and have developed my skills in some foreign languages that way.
I am not the only one. The whole world is addicted to the internet. Sending data is now something you do with a few clicks and a few lines of text. You can send huge amounts of data from Vladivostok to Bogota in a matter of seconds. People all around the world can check videomessages people leave on youtube.
Now imagine that somebody "turns off the central switch". I can only fear what would happen. Stock markets would probably go bananas because they are not being fed regular data. The most important letter exchange format in the world(e-mail) would cease to be and sending messages to eachother would become a matter of days not seconds. Distributed projects would die and it would cease to be effective. And that's only the things I can think of. Imagine the extra effects.
We are all addicted to the internet whether we use it or not. That's the paradox.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Where there is an addiction, there needs to be treatment. Mandatory, if need be — for the betterment of the society, of course.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Reeducate the lot of them I say. What better excuse is needed for regulating and controlling Internet users?
Yesterday they announced that taking cholesterol drugs when healthy is a good thing. I told my wife that no one is healthy anymore; we are all simply waiting for a chronic disease to strike.
Today 10% of China's population is declared "sick". So now we don't have to wait for a disease to strike us - we already are diseased, but the doctors haven't told us what we have yet.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
So if my blackberry is constantly connected to the internet and it's on 24/7, I guess that means
...
...
I'm ... what were we talking about? I was checking my mail.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Seriously what the heck? How can you be addicted to a form of communication? I dont agree with an attempt to make Videogame Addictions a real diagnosis either, but atleast that holds a tiny bit of water compared to this bull...
Pardon me, I have to sniff my router for a bit. Apparently I'll relapse if I don't.
I cannot understand why China has to make such a big deal about these types of things. Can you imagine how many people in the US are addicted to the internet? *raises hand* Why must they take control over the internet? The internet is a place to be free with no rules, where you can go anywhere and do anything. They need to calm down in my opinion.
-Steve "The Geek" Hencye
Take the guitar away from my brother, and he'll show every one of those symptoms. Does that mean he's addicted to guitar? Or does it mean that internet addiction is bullshit?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The problem is just as bad, if not far worse there. The prolific MMO play-rate [plus localised social networking] doesn't help either.
But somehow, I don't see Korea classifying it as an illness anytime soon.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
I think there needs to be a distinction between an addiction and a problem. I think its fine to be addicted to something, as long as it is not a problem. We all have our "addictions" but as long as we function as contributing members of society I say leave the addiction alone. It's when that addiction becomes a problem we have...well...a problem.
I'm already addicted to Weed, television, and Rachel Ray, I might as well be addicted to the entire internet too.
IMHO, an addiction should have some physical counterpart. If it's strictly mental, it's just a bad habit.
For example, an alcoholic will get the DT's if they don't drink. A heroin addict will convulse and sweat if they don't get their fix. A cigarette smoker will get headaches, tremors, and an increased appetite without their smokes. I should also mention that alcoholics and some other drug users, when quitting cold turkey, can actually die from withdrawal.
Take away and addicts internet and what, they read the paper or watch TV instead? That's not an addiction, sorry. Take the internet away from an 'internet addict' for a week and they will have found other things to do. A drug addict will still be thinking about his drugs... for months and even years.
I should mention I smoke cigarettes, I'm a recovering alcoholic and have had various drug addictions when I was younger and stupider. I use the internet all the time and even play WoW, but it's hardly an addiction and don't see any possible way it could be classified as such unless there are marked differences in brain chemistry or something like that.
If you're reading this comment, then yes, you are addicted to the Internet.
Double points if you respond to it so that you can argue with me.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I'll run your comment off right off the rail
1. We admitted we were powerless over the Internet (even the filtered one in China) - that our lives had become unmanageable (Communism is good).
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (already defined as Google) could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (Eric Schmidt) as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral database inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God...er Eric, aka EES, to ourselves and to another human being (Probably in the IT Department) the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have EES remove all these defects of using another browser other then Chrome.
7. Humbly asked EES to remove our IE8 Beta installs.
8. Made a list of all persons we had pwnd, and became willing to make amends to them all (China's really working on this list too, really, honest).
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, buy supplying them with stolen credit card numbers and boxed copies of the English show "The IT Crowd" except when to do so would injure them or others, or if they already own it.
10. Continued to rewrite our personal inventory database and when we were wrong promptly debug it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with EES as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out that we will no longer "Do Any Evil" .
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Chinese Internet Addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs on our brand new Android equipped devices.
(disclaimer: I'm in REAL 12 step program - if you are too and don't see the humor in this, tough shit)
Is that an addiction too?
What about: Nothing To Do Once Online??
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
6 hours a day?
L4|\/|3rz.
Thanks to virtualization, I spent 6 hours on the Internet in just the past 40 minutes!
30% of them are female... what are their emails?
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't spend your time coding or connected to a MMORPG, and living on pizza and coke you're not net addicted!!!
On a more serious note I find it interesting that they don't distinguish between work and play. An addict is online because he or she wants to be, and will not take the opportunity to do other things. A worker may jump at the chance to get away from the computer (provided that doesn't mean they have a hell of a job trying to catch up when they get back).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Many of these "symptoms" can be found in those who have fallen in love: "difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be [with the loved one]" etc.
Given the high ratio of young men to young women in China, this could be seen as a transferrence of affection by men who can never hope to have a girlfriend or wife.
The Internet seems a rather benign place to transfer these interests, as long as China's "Great Firewall" keeps them from exposure to incorrect thoughts.
By what methodology do you judge which addictions are valid? The cure to "crack addiction" is STOP SMOKING CRACK, but saying it in capital letters doesn't make it easy.
You make a good point that not *all* addictions are true "addictions", but it's a point we already know. The question is - how to determine which are, and to what extent? It isn't helpful to try to oversimplify a potentially complex question in psychology.
At first, I read that as GHB... medicine for what ails 'ya?
Those are symptoms of people who aren't high-functioning addicts.
Any addiction is defined by one simple criterion: can the person exercise self control over the behavior?
The question can become existential: what if they don't want to quit? If they're high-functioning, they might never have call to exercise self control. In which case what's the difference whether they're addicts or not? The only question then is whether something might change requiring their quitting, and they might not be able to, which could be a problem.
Besides, everyone is "addicted" to food. Few complain about the addiction, except people who can't afford to eat, who have some other compulsion/obsession that conflicts with eating, or who have a compounded problem of eating too much. But we all live with our basic addiction to food, which isn't really a problem, and is even celebrated. Why should any other addiction matter, if there are no bad symptoms?
--
make install -not war
...the shopping before the thought police turn up and haul me off to boot camp in the forest, because I have a 24/7 on Cable connection to the Internet.
Leave it to the Government of China to classify the desire to read information not published by their own news outlets a disorder. On a separate note, it is commonly held that young men often think of sex, usually every few minutes. I can't wait to see what they'll classify that as.
Where's my sock? There it is...
"Internet addiction" is no more or less real than "Television addiction." Both have the same cure - TURN THE DAMN THING OFF!
O.k. I will listen to you and turn off my Inte
how about that ? the clinic any whomever did that research in china should shove their results up their asses in my opinion.
what they define are stuff normally found in any average home in the modern world in people that are watching daily tv broadcasting after a long day's work. so our modern life is also an ailment too ?
give me a break.
Read radical news here
to escape the realities of life. people who see that there is little hope in future, or too much effort, too little gain, try to escape the reality.
its natural. its an instinctive reaction. computers, games, internet is the best addiction in that regard, because they are not directly lethal to the biology, or psychology. just, excessive tiredom, or distancing from the physical social life existing around the person.
chinese society should ask itself, what is wrong with their modern way of life, and try to remedy it.
Read radical news here
"About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men."
This means that .1*253000000*.3=7590000 women on the internet, as a lower bound.
Clearly these statistics cannot be trusted.
I suppose I can now declare and define a new and dangerous addiction - Air addiction.
My research has shown that people deprived of air for as little as 30 seconds will present "difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to breathe, irritation, and mental or physical distress." Do YOU meet these criteria?
Yawn. The problem isn't the internet, caffeine, nicotine, heroin, crack, meth, etc. The problem is the underlying psychology of the individual. People who become "addicts" aren't victims of the substance/behavior. Rather the behavior is a manifestation of serious psychological problems like depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc. There's a REASON they're seeking that dopamine.
Perhaps the Chinese will soon announce a melamine-laced cure. Or maybe powdered rhinoceros horns will be involved somehow in the treatment.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Some twitter users reported Godaddy.com can be accessed again in China from last night on. It's not surprising thinking of Sourceforge and Wikipedia's sufferings back and forth. For more information click here...
I'm sure lots of people in China do surf a lot. Hardly suprising when its probably the only way they can get access to actual news rather than heavily biassed and censored proaganda.
If I was cynical I'd say this is simply just a made-up study for the chinese government to justify further censorship or even a total ban on internet access to all people of china except presumably, government officials.
It used to be America which came up with these laughably absurd concepts, guess that outsourced that as well.
Trusting the government to do the right thing was a way of life; for most people it was the only way they knew and they lived happily by it. Of course, the media usually projects the government in a rather positive light, but hey, it keeps the people happy. The only thing I dislike the Chinese government for is the education system, where nationalism and reverence of communist heroes were ingrained at an early age.
That shows you have never really lived in the country for more than a few weeks. In China, people all just ignore whatever government said and find ways to bypass whatever rules the government tries. They don't worry about "rights" because they just ignore rules (even as simple as traffic laws) whenever there is a fringe benefit. And if you get in trouble, find some connection in government to bail you out. That's why there are so many tainted products.
12+ hours a day here. I've been online for more then 6 hours just doing homework today, so screw their definition of addiction.
If the world gives me a good reason to use a different medium for my entertainment or education I'll listen, however the internet is both my work and my play. And I'm quite happy that way.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
But not surprising for it to be coming from China. I can only imagine life to be
so completely without thrills in that place, it's a small wonder people try at
least to escape mentally. And that's probably the real beef the commies have
with the internet, it not only imports a whole lot of critical thought into the
country but it also takes away from the communist party mindshare.
hook ya up to a turbine or something.
For people not connected to the technological world, heavy use of electronic devices might appear to be some kind of addiction. I feel sorry for those people, because when the singularity comes, they will be unfortunate casualties. Games are merely an alternate reality in which people can live quite happily as long as it's sustainable. Once we're connected to the 'net through myriads of implanted devices to have those devices disabled would be devastating.
... the same doctors who diagnose people with things like "clabbered bile", and "an imbalance in the Chi", and other mysterious disorders, which equally mysteriously can all be cured by poking people with needles.
Man, what a scam. I could probably make more money than either a Chiropractor or a Naturopath!
I'm sure that the "cure" for this "addictive ailment" will involve some sort of "re-education", too. Fucking bastards.
Doing what you know is "best for you" can be damn hard when suddenly, due to stress, self-loathing, fear, crushing boredom, etc., *the bottom drops out of your ability to care*. At some rational level the person "knows" they ought not do x, yet there is this other voice of, "Aww, who gives a crap anyway" and they go on with their behavior.
Yes, sometimes one can ignore that voice and bulldog forward into avoiding the behavior and doing the right thing. Sometimes one can't. What makes or breaks it has everything to do with conditions: genetics, upbringing, weather, finances, employment, friends, daylight, blood sugar level, cortisol level, judgments about the future and likelihoods of future payoffs, presence of useful distractors, etc. Some of this is finally being studied scientifically instead of just applying some clunky folk psychological simplification to it. Stay tuned.
Anyone notice how this seems to be more of a problem in the Orient than anywhere else? I don't usually hear about Punk-rocking Discotheque Germans or Rednecks ever dying from playing games for 10 days straight...
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
I need internet for socialising with my friends, watching news, listening to radio, watch TV and play games. Oh my god I am addicted! Oh my god I am ill!
Fucktards^2
Here be signatures
Reminds me of the "test" if you need the Guardian's religion in Ultima 7. No matter how you answered the questions, there would be something wrong with you. E.g., if your mother and a small child are drowning, and you can save only one, who do you save? If you chose the child, you obviously are nuts, if you didn't choose the child you obviously are nuts.
Well, ok, maybe this one isn't in the same way, but it's broad enough to make a large chunk of the population "sick" even if they don't have a computer at all.
E.g., difficulty concentrating? Well, after working some 12 hours a day in a sweatshop, I would imagine that a lot of Chinese are rather too tired to really concentrate on much. Trouble sleeping? Well, too many worries will do the same to you. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Let's face it. By "internet addiction" they mean "porn addiction."
All sys-admins must be addicted. I mean I'm online 6+ hours a day and under "mental distress".
Oh I'm hooked Chinese doctors please help me!! And if you can bring a couple of young chinese girls to blow job my addiction off.
Internet = knowledge, work, entertainment. Best drug EVER. Just remember one thing. Internet is NOT a series of tubes. I know cos I tried to make the beer come out and got electrocuted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomania
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
If they don't give a crap, then why should I, or anyone else? Their life is their responsibility. If they want to shirk their responsibility, then they have only themselves to blame for the consequences.
If someone says "I really need to get a job", and does nothing about it for years on end except make excuses for why today is not a good time to start looking, eventually, you'll conclude that person doesn't REALLY want a job. So why can't the same reasoning be applied to the obese who, at some level, "want" to lose weight, but aren't willing to do the hard work that goes with actually making it happen? Ditto for smokers, gamblers, and internet addicts. They don't want it badly enough to actually make the changes they know they need to make. They're still in their "comfot zone."
Imagine those "addicts" on an uncensored Internet... it would be like handing a heroin addict 95% pure product.... wait a minute...
;)
Hey China! Disable your firewall for a day and you'll solve the problem!!
(instead of 10% addicts they'll have 10% jelly-brained zombies
you have to change your circumstances. make drastic decisions and implement them.
Read radical news here
Bloody hell. I shoulda noticed sooner. Obvious troll is obvious. Not that it helped me.
Note to self: pay attention to users' homepages and email addresses, at the very least. Particularly when they say "troll" right to your face.
All mods please note: MOD DOWN ALL tomhudson POSTS, INCLUDING ALL ANCESTORS OF THIS MESSAGE. Thanks.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
So, you can't argue against what I say, so you would rather kill the messenger ... that's really lame. Even trollish.
Not all trolling is done with the sole intent of making people look stupid - some of it is designed to get people to think through their illogical positions. This whole "internet addiction" bullshit is one example.
Try this thought experiment: Lock an "internet addict" in a room with a pc and a connection to the world. Tell them that they have 2 choices - they can eat, or they can forfeit today's calorie for unlimited surfing for the day. Repeat. Tell them that if they eat, then surf, they lose both choices the next day - they will go hungry AND have no internet. Watch how quickly they lose their "addiction" and learn to HATE the internet.
Here's another experiment: Take-away the computer and give them a wall of books instead.
Pretty soon you'll have a book junkie who can't stop reading. The flaw is in the person (obsessive compulsive and/or lonely and/or bored), not in the tool being used.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I'm addicted to gaming, not the Internet, you fucking Chinese morons! What does being online have to do with gaming? Not necessarily anything. A happy addict > a miserable non-addict. Simple. Hey, let's spend millions on a study so we can make other people's flaws official! Sounds like THEY are the flawed ones, and in need of a self-esteem boost!
I have a better experiment. Prove to all of us that you are not an Internet addict: never post again.
That will teach us!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
That wouldn't prove anything, since the internet is more than just slashdot - but then again, since I don't believe in "internet addiction" any more than I believe in "sex addiction", I wouldn't have anything to prove anyway. By the way - "physician, heal thyself" - if you feel that's a good way to prove it, why not try to prove me wrong by taking your own advice. It would be one data point in your favour.
... in Korea only old people use it.
Ah, apparently I'm not alone...
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.