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  • The Guardian

    'Electronic heroin': China's boot camps get tough on internet addicts

    In the first country to label online addiction a disorder, parents are taking screen-obsessed teens to treatment centres for sometimes dubious cures
    by Tom Phillips in Bafang village, Jiangsu province Aug 28, 2017 4 minutes
    Xiong Chengzuo, who says his parents tricked him into attending a boot camp for internet addicts. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

    It was around midnight when the taxi pulled up outside the prison-like compound and Xiong Chengzuo’s parents delivered him to the man they call the “evil godfather”.

    Earlier that day, the trio had set off from their home, more than 600km (370 miles) away, on what Xiong’s parents claimed was a family outing. In fact, their destination was a boot camp-style treatment centre for troubled teenagers and internet addicts whose online obsession has their parents worried.

    “They tricked me,” Xiong says of his internment on 18 December last year. “I shouted and I yelled: ‘I want to get out! I don’t want to stay here!’” It was no use: “My

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