According to a survey released yesterday, conducted by the China Youth Association for Network Development (CYAND), more than 13 percent of Chinese youths and young adults are addicted to the Internet based on criteria developed by CYAND.

At the end of July, the number of Web-surfers in China was 103 million, of whom 15.8 percent are under the age of 18, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

Chinese aged between 13 and 35 in 30 major Chinese cities, 26 provincial capitals and the four municipalities were interviewed for the survey.

CYAND is a group associated with the Communist Youth League of China, and one of its goals is to promote healthy Internet usage among the young.

About 22,500 valid replies were collected from schools, Internet cafes and through the Internet, making the survey the biggest of its kind in the country.

According to the survey, 17 percent of male Internet users are addicts, compared with 10 percent for females.

The survey results show that most addicts are aged between 13 and 17, and they are either junior high school or vocational school students, or unemployed. For example, 23.2 percent of junior high school students are considered to be Internet addicts. Government employees, on the other hand, are the least addicted, accounting for only nine percent of the total.

About 42 percent of addicts are attracted to online games while the figure for non-addicts is only 24 percent.

Only 35 percent of addicts use the Internet for research, while the figure is 52 percent for non-addicts.

Beijing high school student Xiao Lin is a typical addict, according to criteria devised by CYAND.

He stopped going to classes so that he could play Internet games at home for more than 10 hours each day. He stopped communicating with his parents.

After much persuasion from CYAND and his parents, Xiao Lin is back in school.

Tao Hongkai, a professor at Huazhong Normal University, said many parents feel helpless when dealing with Internet-addicted children. "They even go down on their knees to beg for help," he told a press briefing yesterday.

(China Daily November 23, 2005)