Results tagged “internetaddictioncamp”

You would think that all the news about the horrors of Chinese internet addiction camps would have dissuaded other countries from trying to start up their own. Not so! Apparently, a clinic has recently opened its doors in Washington state, 13 miles away from Microsoft's HQ. The reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program costs $14,500 USD and provides a 45-day intensive care program for game, Internet, and texting addicts. Activities include things like meandering along forested trails, learning to participate in home chores, and (allegedly) feeding baby goats. What?! Seems slightly more fun than our methods of beating kids - sometimes to death - and then firing the reporters that dare to write about it happening.

Ministry of Health guidelines for Internet addiction are out and it looks like anyone who spends just 40 hours online each week can be considered an Internet addict. The draft definition was "based on research into the standards used by foreign countries and has also been influenced by China's experience with the problem," according to CRI English. We just took a good look at how many hours we're logged on each week and it seems like we could be considered internet addicts twice over. Uh oh. We hope this doesn't mean someone's booking us for one of those painfully deadly internet addict camps.

It looks like all the bad press still hasn't reached parents who've sent their child to a "personality correction" boot camp. Another boy, 14-year-old Pu Liang, was beaten to a pulp at one of these camps and is now in critical condition at a hospital in Sichuan. His father says he's suffering from water in the lungs and kidney failure after being hit by the camp counselor and several other children. The training center has denied the accusations, saying that it was just the other students who beat up Pu because he couldn't get along with them. Pu had been sent there for becoming addicted to online games and telling his parents he no longer wanted to go to school. Source: China Daily

Yikes these internet addiction camps just sound scarier and scarier the more we hear about them. After news of Deng, a 16-year-old who was beaten to death as part of a "personality training program," got out, Southern Metropolis Daily decided to investigate by going to a related training camp in Guangzhou. According to the translation by Danwei, the training camps were still in operation despite educational authorities' declarations that they had been halted. Children on the third and fourth floors, when they saw the reporters, began sticking notes into aluminum cans, drink bottles and slippers. They held up bamboo mats with the letters "SOS" written on them and some bore papers and clothes scrawled with the words "beatings" and "help." They were all stopped by the instructors. We've got chills.