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In China, Electric Shocks To 'Cure' Internet Addiction

Internet Cafe in Beijing, China
Internet Cafe in Beijing, China

LINYI — Dr. Yang Yongxin first garnered attention a decade ago when he opened the "Young People Risk Behavior Intervention Center" in this city in the eastern province of Shandong. The "risk behavior" in question was not drugs or sex, but wasting time online.

The Nanfang Dailyreports that Yang, who used to work in the psychiatric ward of Linyi People's Hospital, claimed he could cure children addicted to the internet by combining "psychological, medical, physical, occupational and recreational" methods.

What Yang calls "physical therapy" was in fact electroconvulsive therapy, an electric shock treatment that used to be popular for serious depressive disorders, mania and catatonia.

Yang said that after connecting electrodes to the temples or fingers of patients, "the electrical stimulation will cause disgust for the Internet," the Nanfang Daily reports.

"This kind of pain cannot be described in any language," said one of the youngsters sent there. Another said it was like "being hit on the temples by a high-frequency vibration hammer."

Some have compared the treatment at the center to concentration camps as teens are required to wear uniforms and report others who don't follow rules. Apart from receiving the electroshock treatments, the patients are also administered unspecified drugs three to four times a day.

After a 2009 CCTV documentary exposed the practice, shock therapy was officially banned by China's Ministry of Health. However, the Nanfang Daily reports that Yang continues his practice and that the so-called treatment is now administered in other parts of China.

The People's Daily blames the trend on poor judgment by families. "It's the parents who are insane but it's their children who take the medicine."

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Society

Do We Need Our Parents When We Grow Up? Doubts Of A Young Father

As his son grows older, Argentine journalist Ignacio Pereyra wonders when a father is no longer necessary.

Do We Need Our Parents When We Grow Up? Doubts Of A Young Father

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Ignacio Pereyra

It’s 2am, on a Wednesday. I am trying to write about anything but Lorenzo (my eldest son), who at four years old is one of the exclusive protagonists of this newsletter.

You see, I have a whole folder full of drafts — all written and ready to go, but not yet published. There’s 30 of them, alternatively titled: “Women who take on tasks because they think they can do them better than men”; “As a father, you’ll always be doing something wrong”; “Friendship between men”; “Impressing everyone”; “Wanderlust, or the crisis of monogamy”, “We do it like this because daddy say so”.

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