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A Deadly Addiction You Never Saw Coming

Submitted by smorgan on
BBC News reports on the death of a Chinese teen who was beaten to death in a rehab center for internet addicts. Apparently, addiction to the internet is a major concern in China:

China is increasingly taking action against what it sees as a pandemic of web addiction.

Some estimates suggest up to 10% of the country's 100 million teenage web users could be addicted, and a growing number of rehabilitation services exist.

However, there is little consensus on how to treat the addiction. In July, China's Ministry of Health formally banned the use of electroshock therapy as a treatment option.

Well, that's good. Yeah, giving shock treatment to 10 million youth who spend too much time online definitely sounds kind of insane. Really, the whole idea of widespread internet addiction sounds pretty ridiculous and I'm inclined to assume it has more to do with a cultural paranoia about computers than an actual epidemic of compulsive web surfers.

But as crazy as all this sounds, it's really not all that different from the way our government deals with marijuana users.

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