In September, Chen Xinran, a 16-year-old girl from Heilongjiang Province, fled her rehab camp and returned home, where she bound her mother to a chair for eight days and constantly beat her with her fists. During the tragic ordeal her mother was starved to death.
"Teenage Internet addicts are rebellious and sensitive. They derive their fun from the cyber-world and think it's an easy way to escape from school and home pressures," Wan said, adding that parents should pay more attention to their children's mental growth instead of focusing only on their studies.
"Today many Chinese grandparents are the primary caregivers for children; parents are only breadwinners in their children's eyes. As a result, children feel alienated from their own parents. By the time that behavioral problems develop, it's often too late for parents to step in," Wan said.
Afraid of their own children
According to Peng Ruilin, a Shanghai-based psychologist of 20 years who has helped children quit the Internet, many parents feel "forced" into sending their teenage children to such camps out of sheer despair and desperation. "A father from Shandong Province told me that once he spent the whole night in his car; he didn't dare go back home because he was physically afraid of being attacked by his computer-addict son."
Such parents regard rehab camps as the last chance to cure their children, but Peng says their first mistake is not probing the causes behind their children's addiction. According to many of the families who have sought for Peng's help, the children couldn't concentrate in class or perform poorly in exams; the more pressure they placed on themselves to do well, the harder school became. To relieve this stress, many turned to computer games or the online world.
"Society blames children who are obsessed with the Internet, but I feel they deserve sympathy. They are just children who know no proper way to adjust emotionally, yet they receive little understanding or empathy from their own parents."
Peng told the Global Times that he has spent many years exploring the interests of adolescents at his center and tries to help them develop a proper attitude toward life. Peng also organizes salons and speeches to teach concerned parents how to maintain healthy parent-child relations and build mutual understanding and respect. This, he feels, is far more effective than rehab camps or military methods of discipline.
Generational disconnect
A mother surnamed Ma from Heilongjiang Province told the Global Times that the courses at Peng's center have been rewarding. "My son has become polite and mild after being treated here for eight months. He has also started to talk with his father again."
When her 17-year-old son first refused to go to school and insisted on staying at home to play on the computer all day, Ma expected he would have no bright future. She dragged him to a local mental hospital, where doctors prescribed him drugs which they claimed could cure his Internet addiction. Her son refused to take his medication, family relations became strained and eventually her son began physically beating Ma whenever she attempted to scold him.
Ma took time off from her job to bring her son to Shanghai on the pretext of getting an eye exam. Once here, she enrolled him in Peng's clinic. They rent an apartment near the center and she accompanies him to all his daily sessions. "My son used to think other students would mock and bully him. I hope he will improve the ability of emotional self-regulation and learn to face and solve problems instead of escaping from the real life."
Ma admits that she simply couldn't understand children's fascination with computers and gaming, but she also says that this generational disconnect could in fact be the source of her strained relationship with her son. She hopes that attending counseling sessions with him will also open her eyes to the real problem behind his addiction. "Fortunately we are on the right track."
