Should Teenage Internet Addicts be Forced to Go to Boot Camp?

December 07, 2007

With 45-megabit download speeds available for a fraction of what a much, much slower connection costs in the U.S., broadband-wired coffee-and-junk food joints known as “PC-bangs” open around the clock on practically every street corner, and a youth culture that affords top online gamers such as Choi Yeon-sung the sort of notoriety and adulation that a LeBron James might get here, it’s probably no surprise that South Korea has perhaps the most Web-crazed  population on the planet. We’re talking about a nation where a few years ago, a 24-year-old man suffered a fatal blood clot after playing the Korean 3-D medieval fantasy game Mu Online for 86 straight hours, the first-ever instance of a person actually dying from excessive Internet use. According to the South Korean newspaper Chosunilbo, a recent government study found that nearly one in three South Korean adolescents have such a Web Jones that they can’t control their craving to log on, and 14 percent need mental health treatment and counseling for their addiction.

As a result, the New York Times reports, South Korea has opened the Jump Up Internet Rescue School (sorry, they apparently don’t have a Web site),  a boot camp that aims to cure webheads and console jockeys by making them do calisthenics, run obstacle courses, march in the rain and perform household chores -- all under continuous surveillance, to make sure they don’t slip in a few games or mp3 downloads on their Internet-capable cell phones (43 percent of South Koreans have them). The Times describes one 15-year-old participant, who was forced by his parents to attend because he was spending up to 17 hours a day online playing Sudden Attack and staring at Japanese comics, steeling up his courage to climb a telephone pole and then jump off in a harness.

“Do you have anything to tell your mother?” the drill instructor shouted from below.

“No!” he yelled back.

“Tell your mother you love her!” ordered the instructor.

“I love you, my parents!” he replied.

“Then jump!” ordered the instructor.

South Korea, it should be mentioned, isn’t the only Asian nation to try the militaristic cure for electronic junkies. China also has opened a camp for Internet addicts, run by an army colonel, outside Beijing. Reuters reports that the teenage trainees rise at 6:15 a.m. to don their khaki uniforms and march with a drill sergeant barking in their ears. Instead of gunning down digital adversaries online, the campers must participate in war game exercises in which they have to shoot at each other for real, albeit with laser guns.

"Many of the Internet addicts here have rarely considered other people's feelings. The military training allows them to feel what it's like to be a part of a team," Chinese camp psychologist Xu Leiting told Reuters. "It also helps their bodies recover and makes them stronger." One boot-camp inmate … er, participant, admitted that the harsh regimen had made him finally realize “the falseness of video games.”

You may be thinking: Subjecting teenage keyboard fiends to all this in-your-face militarism is kind of overkill, isn’t it? What’s the harm in wasting an hour or six slaying some pixels in Halo 3? On the other hand, you may have just Googled this 2006 New Scientist report of a Stanford University study that found that one in eight Americans showed signs of problematic Internet overuse. Should the U.S. create boot camps similar to the ones in Asia? Should youthful Internet addicts be compelled to play soldier? Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Daniel Klaisner]

A boot camp for gamers!? Well not only do i think this is obsurd but its not going to work. Weather we like it or not games will be here, technology is only increasing so games will be more and more abundent in the future. What i propose is making games have some sort of educational value. Why not have a shoot em up with a problem solving plot.

[Moe B.]

I really, really like this idea. The Internet, video games and text-messaging are turning a generation of teenagers into brain-damaged, parasitic zombies with minute attention spans who subsist on Skittles and Mountain Dew and vast amounts of bandwidth. I say, round them all up and send them to wilderness survival reeducation camps out in places like Idaho and Utah, where they still have dial-up internet and cell phone towers are used for target practice. Or better yet, maybe we can outsource the treatment of Internet addiction to some of those Middle Eastern countries who already torture terrorism suspects for us.

[Tirebiter]

Scary to think, but I bet that if somebody asked Mitt Romney about sending teenagers to these camps, he would be in favor of it. Giuliani too.

[Ian]

Just goes to show that lots of people are in some serious need of adult supervision. when i was kid, if I'd overindulged in such onanistic pursuits, my dad would have whipped me with his belt till I couldn't sit down at a computer or anywhere else, all the while telling me "this hurts me a whole lot more than it hurts you" of course. He rarely gave me money unless I helped him with something like cleaning up the basement. He made sure I had an after school job - at the time it was flipping burgers at McDonalds and before that it was a paper route. I had to hand over half of what I made for household expenses. Neither Mom or Dad went to college, and we were not well off by any means, so the money was needed. Mom's dead now and Dad's dying from emphysema. What I wouldn't give to be able to relive those days and let them know how much I appreciate what they taught me.

[Gameboyz]

Duude, whered you grow up...NORTH KOREA or sumthin? Oh my bad, they probably don't have McDonalds there. It wouldnt kill you to lighten up a bit. As for these internet addiction camps, theyre totally bogus. Nobodys ever killed anybody else playing Halo. In the US we got a president whos addicted to invading countries and killing people for real. He needs to go to some camp, not a bunch of harmless gamers.

[Patrick]

Come on guys, play nice now. :)

[Geeksquad]

These cold-turkey boot camps are a great idea, but why limit it to Internet addicts? What about, say, people who compulsively watch Chris Matthews, O'Reilly and those other screamers on cable news? That's just as unproductive and mentally and physically detrimental as playing Body Count until your thumbs go numb. Plus, unlike teenage gamers, those people actually vote, so they've got the potential to do some real damage to society.

[Daniel Klaisner]

Ok guys to those who are for this i gotta say, WHAT! This is something for parents to deal with as Ian said his parents did with him. If kids are playing these games so much then MOST LIKELY its indirectly the parents fault. They provide it to the kids unless the kids are old enough to get it themselves but still this is a matter of disiplining your children. Take your kids out once in a while. Take them to the zoo for crying out loud. But a boot camp? Not going to work

[MDD]

These boot camps shouldn't be seen as punishments. To me they're more about life efficiency. Entertainment addiction in general is a real problem and it isn't healthy for children. It would be great if parents could control their habits better but the fact is they don't.

Having been through a bootcamp myself, I think that they're a great way to start over and explore less hedonistic ways of living.

I know too many people who are dissatisfied with their lives. They spend hours a day isolated from ther real world. Lets face it, not everyone has enough discipline to just pull themselves away from a computer, some of us have to go to extremes to remember a life before virtual reality.

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[Jeff Paul Scam]

I love the IT technology, my dad got me my first pc for my birthday and ever since I became a big IT freak. I started internet marketing for the last four months and still looking for material that can help my marketing.

[Patrick Kiger]

What does that have to do with Internet addiction boot camps?

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