Internet Addiction Treatment: Why Not Learn from America?

America’s first internet addiction treatment center opened recently, and while the criteria it uses to diagnose addiction were taken from a similar center in China, its treatment methods are very different from the Chinese institution’s. It doesn’t use electroshock therapy, forcible treatment, or medication; on the contrary, the American institution employs psychologists, recreational activity specialists, and internet experts, and one of the treatments it uses has patients care for small animals.

The internet is a global affair, and therefore internet addiction is a worldwide problem; China does not have a monopoly on internet-addicted youth. Both Japan and Korea have opened internet addiction treatment centers, and on August 18th news broke of the new center in the United States.

At this point, each nation’s criteria for diagnosing internet addiction are basically the same; even the standards used by the American institution are a direct translation from a treatment center in China. Nevertheless, though the yardstick is identical, specific treatment methods vary widely. In the past, parents in China would get nervous when discussing internet addiction because they feared their own child would become an addicted youth. Now, however, it’s the topic of addiction treatment that rattles their nerves, because current Chinese treatment methods are rife with blood, violence and even death.

There are multiple treatment centers here in China, but the methods used are mostly the same across the board. Under the banner of “traditional instruction,” treatment methods such as starvation, beating and electroshock therapy are used freely, the goal being to cause psychological and physical distress to the addicted youth. And the result of these methods is not a scientific treatment of the addiction itself, but rather relies on violent force to make the addict afraid of the internet. However, as soon as they are out of range of this violent force, won’t the addiction make a quick return? Nobody tells the parents the answer to this question.

China had internet addiction treatment institutions before other nations, but our treatment methods are obviously backward, and we need to seriously learn from others. At the new American treatment center, not only do they employ psychologists, recreational activity specialists and internet experts, they even allow the patients to care for small animals as a therapy. Clearly we can see that other nations’ treatment programs are more scientific, more humane, and more readily received, and surely the outcomes are better than ours as well. If we take another look at our institutions, apart from the fiends they call “overseers” and the violent physical punishments they utilize, what else do we have?

Internet addiction needs treatment, but we must reject these forcible treatments and commit to using more scientific methods. On this point, Chinese treatment centers and their personnel would do well to learn from other nations.