Electronic Heroin: A Look Inside China’s Internet Addiction Therapy Centres
SO hooked on gaming are some Chinese players that they wear nappies to avoid taking bathroom breaks. The New York Times has produced this short film on how the wired youth are weaned off electronica at treatment camps. The attitude of one therapist is that the internet is akin to “electronic heroin”, which suggests he has no idea how heroin works.
This is how China treated heroin addicts in the 1930s:
China’s Anti-Narcotic Laws, sentencing convicted drug-dealers and addicts to death, came into force first on January 8 when a drug-dealer was executed in Peiping. Five more were shot there on January 13, and the authorities state that further executions are scheduled until the drug traffic is stamped out there. Huge crowds attend the executions, and beforehand vast amounts of drugs are burned. Apart from Peiping, the laws have failed to take effect in most districts. One of the drug-dealers is forced to kneel whilst a soldier shoots him through the head from close range in Peiping, China, on Jan. 13, 1937. (AP Photo)
The Chinese have also treated people for electronic addiction by pricking them with shocks of electricity:
A 12-year-old boy receives electric shock treatment for his Internet addiction at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital in Beijing Friday June 17, 2005. The boy, a new patient, had become so addicted that he spent four straight days in an Internet cafe, barely eating or sleeping. The clinic, the country’s first government-approved facility geared toward curing Internet addicts, has treated more than 300 addicts since opening last October. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)
The camp kapo says the kids “know the internet inside and out, but nothing about human beings”. And that’s odd because human beings are all over the web, having created the content and the games.
Here’s the video:
Posted: 23rd, January 2014 | In: Reviews, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
