The chinese government say that if you spend more than six hours a day online, you may have a clinical disorder
I read in the Guardian today that the Chinese government wants internet addiction “officially” recognised as a psychological disorder. Honestly! That Graham bloke off Jeremy Kyle has diagnosed loads of hapless chavs as web addicts. How much more official does it get?
Admittedly most of the people on Jeremy Kyle are so weak willed- as their waistlines will testify- that they could potentially get addicted to anything: drugs, the internet, stripped pine furniture… pretty much anything that enters their orbit. But nonetheless, I think the problem rightly deserves attention.
Unlike the Chinese government, though, I think obsessive internet use is a symptom of psychological disorder, rather than an illness in itself. Let’s face it, everything can’t exactly be hunky dory in your life if you’re shopping for a “second life” on the web, or making an “avatar” of yourself to play with. In my humble opinion, the fact that this is done through innocuous medium of keyboard and mouse distracts from how fundamentally disturbing it is. People would be a hell of a lot more worried if we were back in the 1950s and thousands of adults were sitting at their desks dressing up dolls and making up magical adventures for them.
There are serious issues here, though. Maybe the Chinese government should consider the real, day-to-day lives of their citizens before they start poking their noses into their virtual ones. Why is it that Chinese people are so desperate to get involved in virtual networks of people, or immerse themselves in wacky fantasy worlds? What are they escaping from?
Maybe the Chinese government should worry less about internet addictions and more about the poor Chinese workers who spend 12 hour shifts on the internet in “second life” sweatshops, killing monsters and gnomes to harvest “gold coins” and sell them for real dollars to wealthier Americans who want to pay for an instant leg-up to the higher stages of the game. Yes, ironically, this cutting edge digital world seems to be spawning all the age-old exploitative trappings of unregulated capitalism, including a new global division of labour.
But no. As usual, the Chinese government’s attention is instead focused on curbing their citizens’ basic liberties. It seems it wasn’t enough to limit their access to information by replacing half the BBC with blank web pages. Now, those who spend too long on the internet in China will be diagnosed with a “disorder” and subject to “military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks” as part of their treatment. However humiliating, I think I’d take an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show over that.
