Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. A brain
Speaker 1: stuff is Christian Seger. In South Korea, public health officials
Speaker 1: have identified internet addiction as a full blown national epidemic.
Speaker 1: An estimated one in ten Korean teenagers is believed to
Speaker 1: be in the grips of an online addiction, mostly gaming,
Speaker 1: but also pornography and social media, and the Korean government
Speaker 1: spends millions of dollars to help kids get clean at
Speaker 1: hundreds of residential rehab centers. The problem maybe even worse
Speaker 1: in China, where state agencies estimate that twenty four million
Speaker 1: youth are hooked on the Internet, sometimes spending three days
Speaker 1: straight encrowded cyber cafes on gaming vendors. China was the
Speaker 1: first to recognize internet addiction as a clinical disorder in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, and has tried to curb the problem
Speaker 1: through military style boot camps that some critics equate to prisons.
Speaker 1: Controversial tactics have led to several deaths, most recently an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old who is allegedly beaten to death within
Speaker 1: forty eight hours of checking in to a Chinese rehab facility. Now,
Speaker 1: outside of Asia, internet addiction is still met with some
Speaker 1: skepticism by the public and the psychiatric community. Citing the
Speaker 1: latest research on internet addiction in Western countries, the American
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Association says that point three to one percent of
Speaker 1: the general population might qualify for a potential acute diagnosis
Speaker 1: of Internet gaming disorder. As of right now, there's only
Speaker 1: one residential treatment center in the United States exclusively for
Speaker 1: technology addictions. Opened in two thousand nine. Restart offers long
Speaker 1: term treatment programs for both adults and adolescents aged thirteen
Speaker 1: to seven teen, and it's designed to detox residents from
Speaker 1: their online addictions in transition back into healthier lives. The
Speaker 1: decision to enter a program like Restart is almost always
Speaker 1: made by parents who fear for the health and safety
Speaker 1: of an adolescent or adult child who is living his
Speaker 1: entire life online and yes, his is an accurate pronoun.
Speaker 1: In eight years, only seven women have passed through the program.
Speaker 1: Residential treatment for technology addiction is modeled after residential rehab
Speaker 1: programs for substance addictions like alcohol or drugs. For those
Speaker 1: that stay, Restart seems to work. According to a Restart
Speaker 1: Parents survey from only eight point three percent of parents
Speaker 1: said that their family member was able to control their
Speaker 1: technology use before entering Restart. When asked the same question
Speaker 1: up to two years post treatment, sixty one percent of
Speaker 1: parents said their family member was extremely, moderately or slightly
Speaker 1: able to control their Internet and digital media use. That
Speaker 1: leaves around thirty percent who relapsed. Unlike alcoholism or drug addiction,
Speaker 1: where former addicts avoid any and all contact with their
Speaker 1: addictive substance, former Internet addicts need to use computers and
Speaker 1: smartphones in order to function in the modern world, and
Speaker 1: that can be very difficult, but it's doable. Since Internet
Speaker 1: or other technology addictions aren't recognized as clinical disorders, they're
Speaker 1: not covered by insurance, and programs like Restart are not cheap.
Speaker 1: A forty five day intensive stay runs about twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or five hundred and fifty dollars a day.
Speaker 1: Even if technology addiction was recognized by the American Psychiatric Association,
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that treatment centers would even accept insurance. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Dave Ruce, produced by Dylan Fagan,
Speaker 1: and For more on this and other topics, please visit
Speaker 1: us at how stuff Works dot com.