The Regulations on the Administration of Business Sites of Internet Access Services, which came into force in November 2002, stipulate that Internet cafes forbid children from entering. The revised Law on the Protection of Minors, which went into force on January 1, 2007, prohibited Internet cafes near primary and middle schools.

Chen told Guangming Daily that online games could lead to players' detachment from reality due to an accompanying loss of interest in having a social life. Online game addicts can also lose the capacity to both control the amount they play and manage their daily lives, Chen said, while forcefully taking away the games can create a void and a strong sense of loss, even attempts at suicide.

Chen said without enough time to study or rest, regular online players often suffer concentration problems in class and even develop learning disorders.

Easy victims

The survey asked whether respondents felt uneasy after failing to go online for three days. Around 55 percent of respondents answered yes. The survey found four groups of young people are most likely to fall prey to Internet addiction: First are those being neglected by their parents; second are those who cope with difficulties in life by escaping into a false world; third are those who suffer from a high degree of social anxiety and a low sense of self-worth; and fourth are those with low self-worth.

Sun said lack of parental love and care is the most significant factor triggering juvenile Internet addictions. During field trips to conduct the survey, she said, the young adults developing online addictions or committing cyber crimes were mostly from unhappy homes where parents had divorced or otherwise given scant attention to their children.

According to Sun, children from such families develop no sense of belonging and tend to resort to the Internet to fill the voids in their lives. She said their long hours of surfing the Internet can sometimes lead to addiction. The cause is easy to see-children from broken families have no parental supervision over their behavior, nor do they have role models to follow in their real lives. When they then turn to the Internet to learn a social code of conduct, they tend to copy extreme acts from the online virtual world in real life without the same ability to judge that adults have developed.

Besides hindering the formation of self-identity, a sense of social responsibility and an individual's personality, addiction will cut off a child's social life and generate many psychological stressors, a decreased sense of happiness and increased aggressiveness and loneliness. These effects could haunt them into adulthood, said Sun.

The survey also reported a steady increase in online crimes committed by young adults. The survey quoted from police sources that online crimes committed by juveniles soared from 400 in 1999 to 6,600 in 2002.

These crimes fall into four categories: spreading pornography and violent information; using the Internet to violate people's rights to privacy, honor and property; illegal attacks on computer networks; and Internet-assisted theft, robbery, blackmail and rape and smuggling of women.

Better use

"The practical significance is enormous since children, juveniles and young adults constitute the absolute majority of the world's 1.5 billion netizens and have been growing vigorously," said International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Deputy Secretary General Zhao Houlin while explaining why the group made the theme of this year's World Telecommunications Day "protecting children in cyberspace."

Guangming Daily said it is becoming less and less possible to isolate children from cyberspace since more teachers are using the Internet to communicate with their students, including distributing homework and class notices. Teachers also encourage students to collect information for school projects from the Internet. This trend has placed many parents in a difficult situation since they worry that their children's minds might be poisoned by online pornography and violence.

Zhao said the Internet, with its wealth of pooled knowledge, could be a useful tool for children to learn about the world. He said stopping children from going online is as unreasonable as abstaining from eating for fear of choking. The only solution, he said, lies in creating a safe cyberspace for children.

Zhang Ping, a middle school teacher in Beijing, said that most juvenile Chinese netizens are the only children in their families. Moreover, they lack opportunities to communicate with their peers face to face after school and they face the pressures of academic competition and suffocating parental teachings. All of these factors push them to use the Internet as a relief valve, Zhang said.

The China Youth Internet Association's Hao called on the government to formulate a juvenile Internet protection law, which would require that online content be rated according to its propriety for different age groups and, further, limit children's access to unsuitable material.