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China Bans Physical Punishment For Net Addicts
gimmebeer writes to tell us that months after a teen was beaten to death in an Internet boot camp, China has banned the use of physical punishment to help teens kick their net addiction. "The death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan, just hours after he checked into an Internet bootcamp in the southwestern Guangxi region in early August, caused a media storm in China. Days later, another teenager, Pu Liang, was taken to hospital with water in the lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in Sichuan Province. The government in July had already banned electroshock therapy as a treatment for Internet addiction, after media reports about a controversial psychiatrist who administered electric currents to nearly 3,000 teenagers. The latest guidelines suggest officials in Beijing do not think that those with unhealthy Internet habits should be forced offline permanently."
Nice spin. What this is, is regulations on treatments requested by parents, akin to Outward Bound in the US.
It's better news than hearing that China decided to just shoot them in the head instead.
The larger problem is the fact that efforts by journalists in China to report on such events typically results in said journalists being arrested or simply disappearing.
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apparently not
I'll believe what you're saying as soon as I can verify it with independent media reports from a free press in China. I'm not holding my breath.
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"By your interpretation a toddler put in a crib is also a prisoner. "
NO! They're not. You clearly didn't bother to actually didn't read his post, did you?
You missed the first line of his post: "C) Are mentally stable and can make their own decisions"
Toddlers are not mentally stable and can't make their own rational decisions, which is exactly what he was referring to.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The 1980's called it wants its stereotype back. Seriously TFS and TFA both talked about the media's role in reporting this and encouraging the authorities to do something about it. No mysterious disappearances or anything. All we have here is privately run camps running amok and the government stepping in to regulate after it becomes widely reported in the media.
Although the behavior of all people on Earth is superficially similar, many cultures such as the Asians have decidedly different attitudes toward children than we do in the US. In Asian cultures the family name comes before the individual's name, emphasizing the fact that the individual is less important than the family. Any member of a family that causes the family to "lose face", or become dishonored in the eyes of others, is seen as a liability to the family. Protecting the family name is often put before the desire to protect one's offspring. It's really only a matter of degree.
The attitude we have in the US to the importance of children is actually abnormal compared to a large percentage of the rest of the world. In parts of Africa there are some truly horrible things done to children by their own parents. Due to lack of resources, there is a strange phenomena where the youngest child is often suddenly accused of witchcraft and either murdered or cast out on the street and usually drummed out of town, never to be allowed to return. Usually the accuser is the mother (although often a step-parent, not biological parent of the accused child). Africa is far from the only place where such things happen to children.
The universality of "humanity" as defined by the unconditional love and protection of children is vastly overestimated. If you don't believe what I've described because you can't imagine feeling that way toward children, well, you need to do more research. Unmodified human nature is really a lot uglier than most people realize.