From Confucianism to Psychology: Rebooting Internet Addicts in China

Abstract

Coined in the 1990s, the term “Internet addiction” encapsulates a brief but influential human history of technological advancement and psychological development. However, most studies have treated Internet addiction as a “global” concept in the realm of science without taking into consideration its sociocultural meanings and local history. In China, obsessive online gaming behavior among youth is viewed as a national issue of public health and social control. This article examines the special development of interventions to address Internet addiction in China within a broader local history of culturally inflected social control, market reform, the one-child policy, and psychology. Based on historical review and ethnographic data from a treatment center specializing in Internet addiction, this article presents a deep analysis of what Internet addiction means in Chinese lives. It argues that Internet addiction is, in fact, a cultural idiom of distress related to social control rather than a universal syndrome of self-control. It represents the dynamic interactions between Confucian family values and market reform, the one-child policy, and recent trends in psychology and technology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)