The Spring Festival of 2019, which just passed, is destined to make Chen Can and Jason unforgettable. Together with dozens of other Internet addiction teenagers, they spent the New Year in an Internet addiction treatment center in Beijing. China Youth Psychological Growth Base, located in the southern suburbs of Beijing, was founded in 2003, and it is the first institution in China that specializes in treating teenagers and youths with Internet addiction. Every child and young person who walks in here has a different history of internet addiction, but because of their internet addiction, they have brought similar pain and suffering to their respective families. In the past 16 years, the number of Internet addiction rehabilitation institutions such as China Youth Psychological Growth Base has increased from one to two or three hundred in China, which is a worrying phenomenon, because there are more and more Internet addiction teenagers, and the unfortunate families behind them are also increasing day by day.
The fall of a schoolmaster took only one semester.
At present, many children with Chen Can are enjoying their first winter vacation after entering the university. A few years ago, Chen Can’s mother imagined such a future for Chen Can, and believed that Chen Can must be a famous university. Chen Can’s mother recalled that Chen Can had excellent academic performance in junior high school. At that time, his goal was to be admitted to the best local high school with the first place in the county. However, everything changed after Chen Can fell in love with online games.
Chen Can, who is in front of the reporter of China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online, is a polite and eloquent young man. He has entered the final stage of Internet addiction treatment in the psychological growth base of young people in China, and will soon resume his normal study and life. He regretted his experience of indulging in online games in the past few years.
Chen Can recalled that he was addicted to an online game in junior high school. He played for three or four hours after school every night, and rarely fell asleep before 12 o’clock at night. However, due to my solid academic foundation and high learning efficiency in class during the day, my academic performance has not been greatly affected.
In the senior high school entrance examination, Chen Can’s score was among the top ten in the county. Although there is a certain gap from the goal of getting the first place in the county, it is enough to ensure that he can successfully enter the best local high school.
After entering high school, Chen Can continued the habit of staying up late to play games every night, but his high school studies were obviously aggravated, and it was already difficult for him to take both games and studies into consideration. In junior high school, Chen Can can still take a nap if he is too sleepy in class during the day, which basically won’t have much impact on his study, but it is impossible in senior high school. Due to lack of energy during the day, there is no guarantee to listen carefully in class. In just one semester, Chen Can’s academic performance has dropped sharply. After a day’s suspension due to a conflict with the teacher, Chen Can found that the suspension would give him more time and reason to play games, and then he began to deliberately skip class, and his learning progress could not keep up. Later, Chen Can directly applied for suspension.
To Chen Can’s mother’s distress, as a parent, there is nothing she can do in the face of her son’s addiction to games and the resulting "fall" in life.
Chen Can’s mother recalled that in fact, as early as junior high school in Chen Can, she and Chen Can’s father had been urging Chen Can not to play games for so long, but the dissuasion had little effect. Later, it was even easy to cause Chen Can’s emotional catharsis. Chen Can’s mother remembers that once there was a guest at home, Chen Can kicked over the gift sent by the guest in order to express his dissatisfaction, which was very rude. As for losing your temper with your parents, it is even more common. At first, Chen Can’s mother thought that the child was rebellious in adolescence. After this period of time, the child would get better. Until Chen Can’s academic performance in high school plummeted and quickly changed from a "schoolmaster" to a stubborn poor student, Chen Can’s parents thought that the child was so addicted to games that it was necessary to be treated.
Chen Can’s mother first found a friend who is a psychiatrist. After a preliminary diagnosis, this friend found that Chen Can’s Internet addiction was very serious, and suggested taking measures to quit it as soon as possible.
When I heard the doctor’s diagnosis of her son, Chen Can’s mother was desperate for the first time in her life. The child who once made herself and the whole family extremely proud actually fell to the point where serious mental problems appeared because she was addicted to online games.
Now Chen Can has realized that at the height of Internet addiction, he was not only obsessed with online games, but also evaded and rejected real life. He would rather chat with people online than talk to them in reality.
In April, 2017, Chen Can came to China Youth Psychological Growth Base for the first time under the leadership of her parents, but in order to get back to school before school starts in September, the treatment lasted only five months. As a result, because of incomplete treatment, Chen Can relapsed after returning to school for one month.
In December 2017, Chen Can once again came to the China Youth Psychological Growth Base. After a winter vacation, he thought he was good, but when he got home, he quickly returned to the state of being addicted to online games.
In May 2018, Chen Can’s parents took Chen Can to the China Youth Psychological Growth Base for the third time. This time, the treatment has been as long as nine months now. The doctor’s advice is that the treatment will not be over until Chen Can is completely cured of Internet addiction.
As the treatment has entered the final stage, it is expected that Chen Can will be able to really return to normal life when the new semester begins. But precious youth has been delayed for three years. Chen Can’s former senior one classmates have entered university life at this time, while Chen Can’s mother has already given up her dream of a famous university for her son.
Chen Can felt that he was unlikely to go back to high school again. He planned to study high school courses by himself while working, and then he planned to enter the university. Chen Can’s mother no longer expects her son to be admitted to the university. Her only expectation is that Chen Can can lead a normal life safely.
A former e-sports player who lost himself.
Jason, 26, has been addicted to Internet for almost 10 years.
Jason’s father told the reporter of China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online that Jason had been addicted to online games since his sophomore year. At that time, he went to Internet cafes every day, and his studies were a mess. There was nothing the school could do about how to save the child, so it suggested that Jason’s father transfer him to a local militarized school.
In the new school, Jason’s mobile phone was confiscated, and he usually lived in the school. He was forbidden to leave the school at will. He had no chance to get in touch with online games. In this way, Jason’s academic performance gradually picked up, but Internet addiction also tortured him mentally. In the first half year of his new school, Jason’s father lied about his child’s illness three times to meet his son’s internet addiction demand, helped Jason to ask for leave, took him out of school and took him home to play online games. However, since then, Jason’s Internet addiction has been temporarily suppressed under the strict control of the school.
After studying in a new school for two years, Jason was finally admitted to a good local university. After going to college, Jason’s playing games was no longer out of control. Jason told the reporter of China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online that his studies in college were not affected by playing games. However, Jason’s father said that his son spent almost every day in the Internet cafe since his sophomore year, and finally he graduated from college, just muddling through.
Jason also participated in the national college students’ e-sports competition and won an award when he was in college, but it was this experience that made him understand that an e-sports player is far from playing games, and needs strict and boring training. When entertainment turns into work, few people can actually persist.
Therefore, when talking about quitting his job one year after graduating from college and starting to focus on online games completely, Jason’s answer to the reporter’s question of why he didn’t take part in e-sports competition again was that he could never aim at becoming an e-sports player, because it was too difficult to take that road.
In the summer of 2016, I graduated from Jason University, and then entered a local company with good conditions in all aspects step by step. However, work can’t bring people a sense of excitement and accomplishment as quickly as games. After gradually discovering the dullness of work, Jason began to devote more energy to online games, from going to Internet cafes to play games after work at the beginning, to taking time off to play games, and then to absenteeism to play games. The unit leader talked to him again and again, and talked to his parents, but they couldn’t make him change his mind.
Less than a year after graduating from college, Jason voluntarily gave up his first job in life, and then looked for several jobs, but all of them could not be maintained within a few days. Jason’s father knows very well that his son’s mind is completely on online games. Where can real life bring him excitement and excitement like the online world?
In the following year, Jason lived a black-and-white life. Jason’s father was annoyed but helplessly watched his son spend every night in the Internet cafe. He went home to eat and sleep early in the morning, slept until three or four o’clock in the afternoon, and then ate something to go to the Internet cafe. Later, Jason stopped going to Internet cafes, so he shut himself in his room all day. He said that he didn’t always play games, and he spent a lot of time browsing and chatting with people online, but he just couldn’t leave the computer.
Jason’s father found that his son, who was cheerful and talkative, had become listless and could not even speak fluently after blocking himself in the online world for nearly a year.
Jason’s father felt that his son was "dying" mentally, and he had to find a way to save his son.
In May, 2018, Jason’s father made up an excuse to cheat Jason to Beijing and live directly in the psychological growth base for teenagers in China. Jason found that he came here to give himself up Internet addiction, and then he rebelled by means of hunger strike, leading other children to "riot" and running away. Jason’s father was determined not to compromise with his son.
After various means of resistance failed, Jason finally understood his father’s determination and began to receive treatment.
The treatment process is full of challenges. After the son started Morita therapy (the treated person is alone in a room with only one bed in the room, which ensures the basic living conditions of the treated person, but there are no social activities, reading, entertainment and other activities to force the treated person to think, examine and recognize himself), Jason’s father did not expect that other children only need Morita therapy for 30 to 40 days, but his son actually did it for 70 days.
The harm of Internet addiction to teenagers will become increasingly prominent.
In the past 16 years, China Youth Psychological Growth Base has treated more than 10,000 teenagers with Internet addiction. Tao Ran, director of China Youth Psychological Growth Base and director of Addiction Medicine Center of Beijing Military Region General Hospital, told China Youth Daily and Zhongqing Online reporter, "A large number of examples show that even if teenagers with Internet addiction complete the treatment of quitting Internet addiction, the physical and mental harm that Internet addiction brings to children will be lifelong."
First of all, Internet addiction does great harm to children’s health.
When Tao Ran treated the children, he found that 90% of teenagers with Internet addiction were lean and thin, and their weight was not up to standard. During the treatment in the base, these children are also generally weak and sick. If the weather changes slightly, they will easily catch a cold and have a fever. Gastrointestinal function is also worse than that of healthy children.
The problem of vision decline of teenagers with internet addiction is also very prominent. According to the recommended standards of international medicine, teenagers over 8 years old should play video games for less than one hour every day, but teenagers with internet addiction generally play video games for more than three or four hours every day, which can easily cause serious damage to their vision.
Internet addiction teenagers have been sitting quietly for a long time facing computers and mobile phones, and lack of sports. Tao Ran said sadly that these children were supposed to be the most energetic, sunny and energetic, but because they were addicted to games, they delayed the best opportunity for physical development.
Secondly, the permanent damage caused by internet addiction to children’s brains directly affects children’s intellectual development, mental state and social life ability.
According to Tao Ran, related research shows that long-term addiction to video games will lead to frontal lobe ischemia of teenagers’ brains and affect their development. In addition to affecting children’s intellectual development, the most important thing is the harm caused to children’s psychological development.
Tao Ran said that there is now a metaphor for Internet addiction teenagers as "machine brain". This means that teenagers with internet addiction generally have no normal emotions and feelings, and like a robot, they treat people and things around them with a cold attitude. They only have emotions when they are addicted to games, but in real life, they are not interested in everything.
However, human beings are gregarious animals, and the development of human society is based on gregarious and social interaction. Only normal communication between people can achieve healthy psychological development. If a teenager or a minor faces a computer or a mobile phone every day and looks for life in the game, his world outlook, values and outlook on life are not mature, and his brain is still in the developing stage. In this state of life, these internet addiction teenagers often have no human feelings, do not understand interpersonal relationships, leave school, and then leave society when they are older. Their life has become virtual, that is, to face life in the way of games, and then to moralize and legalize.
In Tao Ran’s view, the mental development of teenagers with Internet addiction has been seriously affected because they have been addicted to online games for a long time, and their mental age is often 4 to 5 years younger than their actual age. The immature psychology of teenagers with internet addiction, coupled with the misleading that either you hit me or I hit you and kill people in the game world, leads them to tend to solve problems by violence.
According to Tao Ran’s investigation, about 86% teenagers with Internet addiction have used violence against their relatives.
When parents and family members stop themselves from playing games, teenagers with internet addiction often beat and scold their parents and family members instead of admitting their mistakes. What’s more, if their requirements for playing games are not met, teenagers with Internet addiction may even kill their parents. On December 31 last year, such a tragedy happened in Hengnan County, Hengyang City, Hunan Province. A 13-year-old junior high school student killed his parents with a hammer because he couldn’t ask his parents for the internet fee. Such vicious cases related to Internet addiction have been common in the past few years.
The China Youth Psychological Growth Base located in Beijing has not received many teenagers with Internet addiction from Beijing, accounting for only about 5%. This is another typical phenomenon that Internet addiction harms Chinese teenagers, that is, the bigger the city, the less serious the problem is, the situation in small and medium-sized cities is worse than that in big cities, and the problem of teenagers with Internet addiction in rural areas is the most serious.
Tao Ran said that mainly because of the families in big cities, children get more perfect family education, and parents’ educational concepts are more scientific, so they will avoid and interfere with children’s excessive contact with video games as soon as possible. In addition, children in big cities have too many things to play and learn, and they don’t have so much time and space to indulge in online games.
In contrast, children in rural areas are obviously lacking in family education, and some rural children may also be left behind. Grandparents are responsible for taking care of their children, and often have no more energy to restrain their children from surfing the Internet and playing mobile phones.
Don’t think that the problem of internet addiction teenagers in rural areas is far away from those of us who live in big cities. Tao Ran said anxiously that in the future, after these left-behind children and internet addiction teenagers in rural areas enter the city, their psychological and personality problems caused by online games for a long time really need the attention of the whole society. "You can’t imagine who these internet addiction teenagers may hurt after what they encounter."
Behind the name recognition of e-sports is the growing problem of teenagers’ internet addiction.
On November 3, 2018, the League of Legends S8 season global finals, the IG team from China won the championship. For a time, domestic media rushed to report, including some mainstream media that had previously reserved their position on e-sports. Looking at the past two years, the exposure rate of e-sports in the media is getting higher and higher, from the analysis of professional industrialization of e-sports to the reports that China players have repeatedly won good results in world competitions, and then to the discussion of e-sports entering the Asian Games and the Olympic Games. However, compared with the stricter control of the media in reporting e-sports in earlier years, today’s reports are more speculative and less cautious.
Chen Can’s mother and Jason’s father, as the deepest appreciators of the serious harm caused by Internet addiction to teenagers, strongly oppose the increasingly obvious high profile of e-sports.
E-sports and video games are different, but they are all based on video games. Children only see some media speculating on e-sports, so they have a tough reason to resist parents’ restrictions on playing games. But how many children can become world champions from an internet addiction teenager?
Chen Can’s mother said, "For the development of e-sports, the state should have legislative supervision. Whether children can take the road of e-sports in the end depends on the evaluation of authoritative institutions to tell them whether they are suitable for the development of e-sports. Of course, we can’t completely ban e-sports, but we can’t mislead most children like this. "
Jason’s father said, "Successful e-sports players are only a small part of the pyramid. It is actually very difficult to take the road of e-sports. In my opinion, the media should publicize it comprehensively and make minors and parents aware of this problem. Now, they only see the bright side, but rarely notice that it is impossible for everyone to become a professional player in e-sports, let alone win the championship. We can’t let it (game makers) dominate public opinion. We want everyone to clearly see the harmful aspect of Internet addiction. "
In addition, Jason’s father also thinks that it is difficult for the state to strengthen the supervision of online games so that children don’t play at all, so the key is how to control them. Parents should also analyze why some children are addicted to online games and some children are not. The deeper reason of addiction is family education, so it is necessary to help children enhance their psychological quality and anti-frustration ability during their growth.
For video games to expand publicity in the name of e-sports, Tao Ran’s suggestion is that e-sports must be over the age of 21 or 22 (equivalent to graduating from college) to participate. This avoids the participation of teenagers and young people whose brains are developing and whose "three views" are being established. E-sports can be played, but it must be played by adults over the age of 21 or 22. Tao Ran found that 80% of teenagers with Internet addiction wanted to become e-sports players, which actually became an excuse for them to indulge in online games.
As far as schools are concerned, schools and teachers should publicize the dangers of excessive use of computers, electronic products and addiction to games just as they do anti-drugs. Instilling children with this danger from an early age may sprinkle venom in their hearts and sow the seeds of defense.
In addition, schools and parents should encourage children to develop more hobbies. Tao Ran said that teenagers with Internet addiction have a common problem — — There are few hobbies, and parents have not cultivated their hobbies well since childhood. They only have to study, and suddenly they come into contact with this game, which must be interesting. Another is to cultivate children’s good interpersonal relationships from an early age. Now there are many only children, and children have no playmates, so they can only play computers and mobile phones. Tao Ran suggested that parents should raise a small animal for their children to release their energy and let them learn to care about others. In addition, parents should reduce or even eliminate electronic nanny products in the process of children’s education. Children under 8 years old are not recommended to touch video games. Children over 8 years old can play for half an hour every day from Monday to Friday and for one hour every day on weekends.
In the past two years, there has been more and more publicity about e-sports in public opinion. Tao Ran believes that this is because some of our game manufacturers actually hold the tools of public opinion, which are the media while developing games. If the enterprises selling tobacco have mastered the media tools, can it still say that smoking is harmful to health? Therefore, game manufacturers will use their own media platforms to talk about the infringement of games on children, and say that games need to be controlled? An enterprise that grasps public opinion will certainly sing a song of praise for what it has developed.
Then, as a game manufacturer, at the same time, it holds a powerful tool of public opinion. Is this inappropriate? Should we have a system similar to the Anti-Monopoly Law, forcibly divest the media platforms of these companies, or split enterprises?
E-sports entering the Asian Games and possibly entering the Olympic Games is a hot topic of public opinion in recent two years, and it is also a powerful starting point for e-sports to carry out image innovation. However, the so-called competition of electronic games itself is still controversial.
In September last year, Yi Jiandong, a famous sports scholar, put forward "Identification of Ten Problems in E-sports in China", pointing out that "E-sports, as a new intellectual competition and spiritual entertainment, is different from sports that seek to strengthen physical fitness or physical limits, and can develop independently according to its own laws. Putting e-sports into the sports system has many adverse effects on itself and sports, especially on the concept and value system of sports. The development of e-sports in China is under the special background of the immature youth sports in China, the highest myopia rate in the world, the prevalence of chronic diseases, the poor fitness atmosphere, and the seriously low fertility rate. It is necessary to get rational policy regulation and even levy special taxes on the industry in order to gradually achieve the coordinated effect of social economy and culture. The author suggests that the government and even e-sports investors support large-scale and long-term research on the defects, drawbacks and deficiencies of e-sports, so as to form an objective, fair and balanced e-sports research and communication pattern, thus realizing the rational, peaceful and sustainable development of e-sports. "
Last December, at the Seventh Olympic Summit Forum hosted by the International Olympic Committee, some participants believed that the game industry where e-sports is located is business-driven, while sports is based on values. There is a huge difference in the basis of existence, which is why it is difficult for e-sports and sports to reach the same goal by different routes.
Yi Jiandong said in "Identification of Top Ten Problems of E-sports in China", "From the current point of view, the IOC’s project selection rules and practices do not support the possibility of e-sports becoming an Olympic project in the near future."
(Chen Can and Jason are pseudonyms in the text)
Beijing, February 18 th
