South Korea has started sending computer-obsessed youth to reeducationInternet Rescue camps, according to a New York Times article. The article is a useful sample for considering fearsome internet discourse.
To begin with, the piece uncritically assumes medicalization. "Addiction" is used without caveat. Listen to the calm, DSM-like assurance:
Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States.
Cleverly using passive voice, the piece quietly naturalizes and objectifies a contested, by no means agreed upon argument.
The article also harps on the theme of grievous bodily harm and death, hinting at a large-scale, violent plague:
...a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace.
...users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.
We've noted stories of people dropping from exhaustion while playing games (for example), and suspected that such rare occurrences would become fodder for subsequent arguments about the scary power of computing. But can anyone cite the death toll? Is there a "killed by games this year" stat? Note, too, the missed opportunity of discussing dropping out as an objection to a society perhaps too obsessed (but not addicted to) competition.
The article contrasts this violent, dangerous world with... exhausting physical activity. Hackler or the camps don't go quite so far as to advocate, say, American-style football over MMOGs (or real car-racing over the virtual; but see this). Yet Hackler does mention horseback riding and long marches in cold rain, hardly activities without health risks even under supervision. And there is still a romantic allure cast over physical activition, rendered harmless and safe in the virtual's deadly glow. This sort of discouse is related to one typical response to a new technology, romanticizing and naturalizing what it threatens.
Meanwhile, a newspaper that prides itself on speaking truth to power calmly endorses government-funded science and mandated clinics.
To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer...
Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem. (emphases added)
To be fair, Fackler does eventually point to criticism, but in a such a way as to easily set it aside:
Though some health experts here and abroad question whether overuse of the Internet or computers in general is an addiction in the strict medical sense, many agree that obsessive computer use has become a growing problem in many countries.
"Some" versus "many"; the inference is that addiction has been accepted by a majority of experts.
Last note: hear the Gothic aura around a PC cafe -
[S]ocial life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.
One wonders if the dimness has to do with screen visibility, or just a flat-out desire to imitate (say) opium dens.
I write the "Is This a Good Idea?" blog for the Science Channel's web page. I just wrote an entry about the idea of these camps. Care to come over and express your opinion there? It's a good chance to publicize your blog.
http://blogs.discovery.com/good_idea/2007/12/should-teenage.html#comments
Posted by: Patrick Kiger | December 12, 2007 at 15:35