An inside look at a treatment center in Beijing for internet addiction, which China classified as a mental disorder and a public health threat in 2008
Celia Chen / South China Morning Post : Tweets: @ldignan , @scmpnews , and @scmpnews . Thanks: @chuakongho Tweets: Larry Dignan / @ldignan : Inside one of China's internet addiction centers. Hint: It seems a bit like prison. Via @Techmeme https://www.scmp.com/... @scmpnews : “I clashed with the guards and was tied to a bed frame for half a day,” Zhao Xiaojia, 15, says of his first day at the treatment centre. He's been there nine months. http://sc.mp/dzjx https://twitter.com/... @scmpnews : Some teens reported being tied to bed frames and put in solitary confinement. But desperate parents willingly pay US$1,400 a month to have their children treated at this addiction centre. http://sc.mp/dzjx https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @chuakongho
Context & Ripple Effects
China classified internet addiction as a mental disorder and public health threat back in 2008, and this SCMP visit to a Beijing centre shows what that classification built: parents paying US$1,400 a month for a facility where 15-year-old Zhao Xiaojia says he was tied to a bed frame on his first day and has now spent nine months. The reporting lands amid a global fight over whether screen addiction is medicine at all — psychiatrists have noted an uptick in cases and US in-patient treatment programs, yet some key institutions still refuse to recognize the diagnosis.
First-order effects
- Families are paying US$1,400 a month for confinement-based care, while teens at the centre report being tied to bed frames and placed in solitary confinement — conditions closer to detention than therapy.
Second-order effects
- Other health systems are forced to stake out positions: the UK's NHS opened its own clinic for gaming addiction in 13-to-25-year-olds, offering voluntary referral-based care as an implicit counter-model, while opponents questioned whether WHO's move to add gaming addiction as a disorder was made under political pressure.
Third-order effects
- Where institutional treatment is punitive or stigmatized, care migrates underground — young people in China are already turning to AI chatbots like DeepSeek and ByteDance's Doubao for therapy to avoid stigma, suggesting the long-run contest is between medicalized clinics, carceral centres, and unregulated self-service alternatives.
The trend: Screen addiction is hardening into an official diagnosis worldwide, but the treatment model each country builds around it — clinical, carceral, or app-based — is diverging sharply.