USEFUL TOOLS: Volunteers from Hefei University of Technology in Anhui Province help children of migrant workers learn to use the Internet on July 14, 2011 (LI JIAN)

Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s, with symptoms similar to other addictions. "We treat it as a psychological disorder when we lose control and do harm to others," said Xu Yan, Dean of the School of Psychology at Beijing Normal University.

In a recent case, police in Ziyang in southwest China's Sichuan Province detained a 14-year-old boy who was accused of pouring pesticides into cooking oil on February 2, causing his parents, elder brother and sister-in-law to suffer severe gastrointestinal distress.

The boy confessed he poisoned his family because his mother banned him from playing computer games, police said.

Experts estimate that thousands of teenagers in China are addicted to the Internet.

The Chinese Government has made great efforts to solve the problem of Internet addiction among the youth in the past few years.

Since 2007, anti-addiction systems have been adopted to prevent underage gamers from playing for excessively long durations. Players must input their identification numbers for age confirmation, and those under 18 are only allowed to play for a specified amount of time, usually five hours.

In March 2011, the Parents' Guardian Project was introduced by eight central government departments, including the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Public Security, requiring online game operators in China to provide services to parents so that they can monitor their children.

As long as the parents can prove their identity as guardians and the gaming account of their children, the operators should follow the parents' request to restrict their young children's online gaming, including setting a limit on the daily or weekly playing time or even imposing a total ban.

On February 17, 15 ministry-level authorities, including the Ministry of Culture and the State Internet Information Office, released a basic framework announcing development of China-specific criteria for diagnosing Internet addiction in young people this year.

The framework establishes conceptual plans to define Internet addiction and spend about three years developing effective methods to identify the early stages of potential addiction, so as to do early intervention for minors.

"The plan is timely and will set out a clear direction on how to cope with Internet addiction," Wang said.

However, he added that it will take a long time to enforce the plan because the issue covers many departments and needs each of them to carry out research and cooperate.

Liu Shaoben, a professor at Hebei Normal University's School of Literature, said that any administrative regulations would have to be coupled with education in order to prove effective in regulating the online gaming industry and protecting the vulnerable.

"People can get addicted to any game, so what we need to do is not halt games but teach people how to play rationally," he said.

A rating system

As with film and television productions, many countries already supervise online games with strict classifications to prevent young people from accessing unsuitable content.

According to a survey conducted by the China Youth Daily last year, 72 percent of 1,718 respondents said that they welcomed the establishment of such a system in China and 44.5 percent of the respondents believed a rating system would effectively help protect children from being exposed to violence and pornography.