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China's Ministry of Health has banned the use of physical
punishment to wean teens off the net, months after a boy was beaten
to death at an internet boot camp.
Chinese parents have turned to more than 200 organisations offering
treatment for internet disorders as the government increasingly
warns of unhealthy internet habits among the young.
Many of the camps are imbued with a military atmosphere.
Patients are forced to replace hours in front of the computer
with arduous physical drills or even more extreme treatments.
"When intervening to prevent improper use of the internet, we
should ... strictly prohibit restriction of personal freedom and
physical punishments," the ministry said in a draft guideline for
internet use by minors, posted on its website.
It appeared to have dropped the term Internet addiction, widely
used in earlier ministry documents, perhaps in a bid to calm
worried parents who fuelled a mushrooming business of harsh camps
to prevent teens from spending hours online.
The death of 15-year-old Deng Senshan, just hours after he checked
into an internet bootcamp in the south-western Guangxi region in
early August, caused a media storm in China.
Days later another teenager, Pu Liang, was taken to hospital with
water in the lungs and kidney failure after a similar attack in
Sichuan Province.
The government in July had already banned electro-shock therapy as
a treatment for internet addiction, after media reports about a
controversial psychiatrist who administered electric currents to
nearly 3,000 teenagers.
The latest guidelines suggest officials in Beijing do not think
that those with unhealthy internet habits should be forced offline
permanently.
"The goal of intervention is ... to urge the target people to use
the internet in a healthy way," the guideline said.
"It's not to stop them from using the internet."
