Photos from a "tough love" treatment center where anxious parents send their screen-obsessed kids.
The camo and calisthenics
in these photos may call to mind a military academy, but they actually
document a rehab center for internet addicts. China has more online
gamers—368 million—than the United States has people. Perhaps it's no
surprise then that Chinese parents, psychiatrists, and media often
describe wangyin, or internet addiction, as a clinical
disorder. Sometimes called "digital heroin," it is said to afflict 24
million young people.
This center in a Beijing suburb houses 70 such patients, mostly boys, and is led by Tao Ran, a "tough love" former army colonel. While controversial treatments have been blamed for deaths at similar facilities, Tao claims his team's methods—which can include brain scans and medication—have a 75 percent success rate. That's welcome news for panicked mothers and fathers who, raised before China's tech revolution, struggle to recognize the online lives of their children, and for a government that fears gaming is yet another way for the internet to corrupt young minds.
This center in a Beijing suburb houses 70 such patients, mostly boys, and is led by Tao Ran, a "tough love" former army colonel. While controversial treatments have been blamed for deaths at similar facilities, Tao claims his team's methods—which can include brain scans and medication—have a 75 percent success rate. That's welcome news for panicked mothers and fathers who, raised before China's tech revolution, struggle to recognize the online lives of their children, and for a government that fears gaming is yet another way for the internet to corrupt young minds.
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