Not all young people develop Web dependency due to family dysfunctions. The book Born Digital, an outcome of the Harvard-St. Gallen Digital Natives project, will help confused adults better understand young people's experience with digital media, including the Internet and cell phones.

This first generation of digital natives born into and raised in the digital world has grown up constantly connected to the Internet, but the lines between the virtual world and the real world are becoming increasingly blurred, according to the book.

"For the elder generation, or 'digital immigrants,' the Internet is a tool, but for this generation, the Internet is the world," said Cheng Lehua, a scholar on Internet psychology with Sun Yat-sen University. Cheng has conducted numerous psychological experiments on young Chinese born between 1985 and 2000.

While such insights may ease adults' worries about young people's Web dependency, encouraging them to find better ways to communicate with them, parents still agonize over the fact that their children essentially become Internet-entranced zombies.

Over months and years, Internet abuse becomes "detrimental" because "it excludes variety and choices of activities, provides only escape and diversion, and is not job related or productive," wrote China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou in Caught in the Web.

How much is too much?

Psychologists worldwide have not yet reached a consensus about how much time is "too much" to classify as an Internet addiction. But they have some generally agreed symptoms to diagnose an online-aholic, such as his Web dependency and impaired social function.

Obsessive net use causes an online-aholic to feel depressed and pessimistic about his schoolwork or career future. The addict loses interest in other activities, has a low self-evaluation and suffers social anxiety.

The lack of an accepted definition of Internet addiction and standards for diagnosis and treatment has led many profit-oriented rehab camps or clinics to use their own methods to correct and treat the disorder. The questionable methods include the widely disputed use of electroshock therapy, medicine-based therapy or military training therapy. The methods may not fully fix the Internet addiction, but instead induce fear and obedience through violence or humiliation.

Aware of the controversial therapies, the Ministry of Health entrusted two mental health research institutions with drafting a national definition of Internet addiction and related treatment standards by the end of this year. The ministry recently denied the reported 40 hours per week of Internet use as a national standard for Internet addiction.

"The problem does not lie in the activities themselves, but the intemperate length of practice," said Zhou.

Net addiction is not a new mental health problem. Individuals who suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, social phobias and other compulsive disorders are more likely to develop Internet addiction, according to Zheng Yi, professor of mental diseases with the Capital Medical University.

Zheng advised parents to allow professional psychotherapists to do early detection and discrimination analysis and tailor psychological interventions for individual addicts. "We should not simply associate weird behavior of teenagers with Internet addiction, otherwise, it could prevent us from early prevention, detection and treatment of teens' mental health problems," Zheng said. According to him, two thirds of the net addicts he treated suffered from other mental disorders such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, depression and schizophrenia.

Welcome to the real world, kid

The Ministry of Health is looking to borrow the practices from other countries to facilitate net addict rehabilitation. The ministry has contacted large theme parks to help teen addicts shift their interest to the real world through living and inter-personal skills training.

"It's impossible for young people to shun the Internet, but we can inform them about all kinds of alternatives they have access to, and the merits and defects of cyberspace from the very beginning, and guide them in proper Internet use," said Kong.

While clinics and camps offer addiction-fighting services, therapy should start with parents, said Tang Denghua, Deputy Director of the Clinical Psychology Center of Peking University. Parents should learn first to create a harmonious family environment in order to guarantee a sense of security for their kids and then to help them develop self-discipline, Tang said.

While offering kids enough freedom, parents should also clarify the boundaries between DOs and DON'Ts. And parents should encourage kids to face pressures and solve problems by themselves while developing a sense of responsibility and self-restraint, she said.

Tao said parents' involvement is a must during his treatment of teen net addicts. He always encourages fathers to hug their kids. Though awkward at first, some kids eventually burst into tears of joy.