'Web Junkie': Harrowing Documentary On China's Internet Addiction Rehab Clinics

cold fjord writes "The Daily Beast reports on Web Junkie, a documentary showing the unsettling efforts undertaken by the Internet Addiction Treatment Center in China to break teenagers of their internet habits. Quoting: 'China was one of the first countries to brand "Internet addiction" as a clinical disorder, and to claim it's the number one threat to its teenagers today. The Chinese government has erected 400 rehabilitation boot camps like this one ... a bizarre hybrid of military barracks and mental hospital. ... Every room in the facility is monitored by cameras. ... Teens spend a minimum of three months at Daxing. ... Wires and nodes will be hooked to their head ... they're administered daily medication (without being told what it is), they have to keep their rooms spotless, partake in individual and group therapy sessions with their parents, and do boot camp-style exercise ... One kid in the film claims to have played World of Warcraft for 300 hours straight, taking only tiny naps in between. ... "Some kids are so hooked on these games they think going to the bathroom will affect their performance. So they wear a diaper. These are the same as heroin addicts. ... That's why we call it electronic heroin."' Wired has further details and a clip from the documentary."

Comments

Diapers !

[vikingpower]

That is what I need, to keep reading /. !

Re:Diapers !

[ackthpt]

That's what I meant.

Those post on facebook walls
Roll their shit in little balls
Those who browse those walls of wit
Eat those little balls of shit.

Re:Diapers !

[rmdingler]

Diapers?

What are the empty Monster cans for then?

MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[Joe_Dragon]

MMORPG can maybe be changed so you don't need to be on 24/7 to get the most of them / fell like you are paying for it so you better play 24/7.

Other games have more breaks build in and you don't have to play 24/7.

Re:MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[interkin3tic]

Only a few people are going to such extremes: the fault lies with them, not the game. I've heard suggestions that even heroin isn't universally addictive, you need to be predisposed to become addicted in order to end up selling yourself etc. I'm skeptical that one can become addicted to WOW, to the point that they wear diapers and play 300 hours straight, without some other problem. And I'm guessing that problem has other negative effects outside of "I play WOW too much."

My point is that the addicts need to change. Changing the games to try to be a nanny for the addicts seems futile: they'll just get addicted to something else.

I doubt that these extreme rehab clinics are the way to do it, I'm skeptical that they take a very scientific approach, but changing the world to cure an individuals addiction is a dumber approach.

Re:MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[ackthpt]

MMORPG can maybe be changed so you don't need to be on 24/7 to get the most of them / fell like you are paying for it so you better play 24/7.

Other games have more breaks build in and you don't have to play 24/7.

Here's some historical anecdotal stuff to chew on...

Long before Warcraft the were MUDs, where people played like addicted players on National Player Addiction Day. I know, I was once one. The terms Life Suck and Time Sink were well known among us, though we laughed it off as we could quit whenever we wanted, though not just yet.

Before I got sucked into mudding I traveled Europe and met a couple in a restaurant in Brugge, Belgium. As I was an American on holiday, this husband and wife wanted to know a little about what life was like in the states and what I did for a living. Their living was currently treating people for Network Addiction - those people who were so glued to every post on a Fido (or other) board they couldn't function outside of hitting Reload every 10 seconds to see if they had any replies. Flamewars were what they lived for, a reason to participate and be heard (even if today nobody remembers any of it.) This meeting was in early January, 1994. Not a new thing, so it turns out. My younger brother was one of those who would do anything (include lie and steal) to keep his connection to a BBS going. They completely understood.

Re:MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[Bacon Bits]

MMORPG can maybe be changed so you don't need to be on 24/7 to get the most of them / fell like you are paying for it so you better play 24/7.

Pretty much this. They build in pressure to play, or return to continue playing. WoW's rest XP was supposed to combat this, but in reality it just doesn't. Certainly once you hit level cap rest XP does fuck all for encouraging you to log off. Battle.Net ladders and all competitive rewards simply reward expertise gained from a small amount of talent and a tremendous amount of time. Keeping your subscription current, buying this year's multi-player FPS encourage return and repeat buyers. Mobile and web-based games like Farmville (and, I assume, Candy Crush) have incentives and micro-transactions to encourage time investments. Even games with time limits have amounts you can pay for extra time. "Fremium" games seem to be the most egregious violators. These games are built to be addicting, not entertaining.

The only real world analogs I can think of are TCGs and casino games. Is that what this is? An adapted gambling addiction?

Re:MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[RogueyWon]

I've played MMORPGs on and off since 2003. If anything, the trend these days in MMOs in the West is very much against needing the kind of time commitment that was common in the early days of the genre.

In the days before WoW, MMOs generally required a very, very serious investment of time if you really wanted to get much out of them. In Final Fantasy XI, which was (by the most reliable metrics) the most successful pre-WoW MMORPG, simply reaching maximum level would require many months of playtime, most of which was spent grinding (killing enemies over and over again in a repetitive cycle). The end-game content would require many, many consecutive hours spent waiting for rare monsters to spawn. I was working a job with more or less 9-to-5 hours when I played it, which meant I could never get to the top ranks. But for the 18 months or so I played it seriously, it was by far my most time consuming leisure activity (probably peaking at around 30 hours a week).

Part of the reason behind WoW's success was that, by design, it eliminated much of the timesink component that had previously been associated with the genre. The level-up process was pretty fast; weeks rather than months for an average gamer (and probably only days when measured in time actually spent in-game). The days of camping timed monster spawns were largely gone, replaced by "instanced" end-game content that guilds could schedule at will. In theory, the time commitment required fell a lot with WoW - and almost every other global MMORPG since has followed WoW in this streamlining.

Of course, WoW certainly didn't end the "MMOs ate my life" stories. In fact, by opening the genre to a wider audience, it increased their frequency. WoW touched off a very competitive streak in a lot of people; and to be one of the most successful guilds in progress terms, you needed to put in a fairly serious schedule of raids (the instanced end-game dungeons). An average guild schedule would have 4 raids per week of 4 hours each, with a 75% attendance requirement for players. On top of this, most players would need to spend at least a couple more hours making in-game money to finance their raiding activities. And many players would have more than one character. So the time required to play at the high levels was still fairly severe. But at least players had the option of more casual play schedules, while still getting some measure of enjoyment out of the game.

And over the years, Blizzard (and their competitors) have actually worked to blunt the edges of the most punishing raid schedules and have, in essence, throttled access to end-game content so that there's much less point in sinking your whole life into the game. There are generally limits (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) on how much progress players can make in a week. You won't be locked out of the game after a certain period (outside of China, or unless parental controls are enabled), but you will rapidly run into diminishing returns. This holds true across most current MMOs; WoW, Old Republic, Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy 14 and so on. The only possible exception (and I don't play it so I can't say for sure) is Eve Online.

So basically, if you are playing a modern "global" MMORPG and you are pumping your whole life into the game, you are playing it wrong. Of course, some people do still play it this way and some Asian MMORPGs are still designed around older mechanics that make a near-whole-life commitment essential. But the people who pumping their whole life into WoW, or who choose to play those Asian MMOs despite their many shortcomings compared to superior "global" offerings are almost certainly doing so because of other issues in their life rather than the game mechanics.

Re:MMORPG can maybe be changed so they

[PrimaryConsult]

I can think of another real world addiction: buying/collecting tons of useless crap, and hoard everything they see. The funny thing is, getting these people onto games like WoW would only improve their life - instead of wasting money on crap that takes up precious space in tiny apartments, for $15 / month they can satisfy the collector urge without cluttering the apartment.

The funny thing is, once I realized this effect, I was able to benefit from it without actually playing the game. Every time I think "it'd be neat to have $USELESS_THING", I'd switch my thoughts over to "or I could reactivate my WoW account and work towards $TIMESINK_ACHIEVEMENT" and with that, I avoid both wasting time and buying useless crap.

Correlation with One Child Policy?

[ScottCooperDotNet]

There is a longstanding trend in the USA for parents to be ever more cautious about where and what their children do, and it seems to have correlated with the century-long decrease in the number of children per woman. Many kids now spend more time inside than previous generations, so they don't develop as strong social skills as they might have. This allows the Internet to somewhat supplement face-to-face contact, and adds considerable anxiety to going outside.

So I wonder if there is a correlation with China's One Child Policy, where parents may be more likely to shelter their only child? Or is there some other cultural cause?

Re:Correlation with One Child Policy?

[cold fjord]

Many kids now spend more time inside than previous generations ...

I saw this story a number of years ago and it stuck with me. For some reason the map originally with it doesn't show up any more, but you can see it in the second link.

How children lost the right to roam in four generations - Map

Re:Correlation with One Child Policy?

[drooling-dog]

Sigh... When I grew up there were 4 channels and if you wanted a video people looked at you strangely, because that hadn't been invented yet. Gaming was big, but it meant going outside and getting some friends together for baseball or basketball (or something that you just invented on the spot). Your parents didn't worry about where you were, as long as you were home for dinner and bedtime.

Alas, now I spend the bulk of my waking hours, at work and at home, sitting in front of a screen. Yes, I do miss the good old days...

The answer: ESCAPISM

[TrollstonButterbeans]

A fairly large swath of China is overcrowded and lacking in economic fairness and social mobility.

So of course escapism is going to be a substantial problem.

And this escapism takes form via addiction. Not so different as the problems in Norway or Russia have historically had in the winters with alcoholism.

Which actually is declining because escapism in 2014 can be internet addiction, which is probably far better than alcoholism.

But I would not criticize these individuals in China very hard, in China there is no freedom to move without permission from the government. And I wouldn't fault the government too hard either, they are trying very hard to adapt but they are not magical and cannot wave a magic wand and fix things overnight.