Possessing the world's largest online community, numbering over a billion users, China was forced to acknowledged it might have a problem with a growing digital-age scourge : internet addiction.
Tens of millions of people of all ages, and from across the full spectrum of society, suffer from the compulsive use of chat rooms, online gaming and self-gratification porn’ sites prompting the creation of government centres to treat the disorder.
But today it emerged that some of the treatments available are as worrying as the condition itself, prompting Beijing’s Minister of Health, Mr. Fuk Yew Tu to ban the use of electric shocks to cure chronic internet dependency.
Doctors released the first diagnostic definition of internet addiction last year, based on a study of more than 300,000,000 intensive users.
It classed addicts as those who spend at least six hours online a day and exhibit any of a range of symptoms - with losing the use of their legs and becoming glued to a pc chair the most prevalent.
The ban follows reports that Dr Flip Flop Fong of the Smiley Face Organ Donor psychiatric hospital, in Wanking province, was using electro-convulsive therapy (ECT).
According to the Daily Shitraker Fong claims to have invented xingnao ("brain-waking") therapy that involved sending a massive electric current from a wire stuck up the anus to the skull.
He added the stimulation might cause pain and make the patients piss and crap their pants but definitely cured them of their internet addictions.
The media further claims patients received ECT if they broke any of the centre's rules, which included eating chocolate, picking their nose, locking the bathroom door, eating crisps and sitting on Fong's chair without permission.
The parents of 12-year old net addict Dim Sum had to sign a contract before admission acknowledging that their child would be given ECT and might well end up even more of a total basket case.
According to the Brain Dead Gazette, when reporter Mr. Pak Lunch called the centre posing as a potential patient, clinic staff stated the treatment fee for internet addiction was 5,500 yuan (£500) a month – or the equivalent in Greedy Grocer loyalty vouchers.
Asked whether electric shock therapy would be used he was informed it was termed "pulse therapy" and was also good for the cardio-vascular system, chronic impotence and making the hair stand on end.
Dr Kun Kare Less, who runs a well-known centre for curing internet addiction in the suburbs of Pingpong, told the media: "There are over a billion net users in China and half of them are young people.”
“More net users means more chances to be addicted to the internet. Young people quickly become addicted to computer games – with pervy old men – like myself - more addicted to grooming young girls on chatbox sites."
He said his clinic treated about 2000 patients a month for addiction, 80% of whom were aged 15 to 18 and after receiving a course of daily 30,000 volt shocks up their rear passage tended to avoid computers in entirety lest the treatment was repeated.
Dr Aji No Moto of the Shanghai Rendition Clinic denied his methods of curing internet addiction were an inhumane method of torture where a patient was strapped to a chair in front of a pc and every time they clicked the mouse on the IE icon they got zapped by a high voltage discharge up the rectum.
Dr Moto claims internet addiction is a very serious social problem, with a majority of his patients exhibiting symptoms of the condition that manifest by chewing their own fingers off if sat before a pc screen and denied internet access.
