Estimates of Internet addiction rates in the U.S. run from about 3 percent to 8 percent of the population, Greenfield said.
Symptoms include an inability to cut down on Internet use and a negative physical or emotional reaction to having access removed, such as how a drug or alcohol abuser would feel if blocked from the substances, he said.
Among the other centers for Internet addiction in China is one that stirred controversy in recent months for its use of electric shock treatment. The center in eastern Shandong province has halted the treatment since it drew widespread media attention, a woman at the center surnamed Yang said by phone. At the height of the controversy, anonymous bloggers wrote about receiving the treatment and hackers defaced the center's Web site, which has since remained offline.
The shocks were meant to make patients associate a negative feeling with Internet use, according to the center. Yang declined to comment further on the treatment.
China's health ministry may soon ban shock treatment for Internet addiction, according to Tao. A health ministry spokesman said officials were researching the treatment to determine its legality.
Tao, who holds a master's degree in medicine, designed the treatment program for his own center with a group of other doctors, he said, sitting beside a small portrait of Sigmund Freud in a treatment room. The team drew on their academic studies and on foreign programs including Alcoholics Anonymous, which inspired a schedule of mutual check-ins and support that Tao sets up for families who have completed the program, he said.
Tao's course is expensive. Each month of treatment runs parents 8,400 yuan (US$1,200), more than half the monthly income for urban Chinese, according to China's statistics bureau.
But parents have been even more generous in rare cases. One father was so ecstatic over his son's improvement that he donated 200,000 yuan to the center.
Still, only about 70 percent of the teenagers are "cured," as judged by whether the parents are satisfied, Tao said.
And the others? "They do change to some degree," Tao said. "But still they go on playing games."
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