Contextualizing China’s ban on new Internet cafes
[snip…]There are critiques coming from the West about China’s “heavy handed” internet policies, such as the stopping of internet cafe permits. But many of these critiques don’t understand the social context of this policy. Internet addiction among under-served urban youth is a serious problem in China. A policy such as a temporary halt in internet cafe permits is an example of an attempt to deal with this social problem. In the West - we tend to see any attempts to regulate “information access” as a violation of rights - but we do it all the time with parental controls on televisions, internet browsers, search engines and etc - so why [are] we not willing to understand it within a Chinese context?
From my brief talks with the principal of a local school for children of migrants - I found out that the principal is absolutely bewildered by how to deal with internet addiction among the teenage youth. The school serves 1st through 9th graders - and he says that starting at 5th grade they are going to internet cafes for hours and whole nights to just play games - they aren’t doing their homework.
Source: culturalbytes
14 Notes/ Hide
-
mandyrubin liked this
-
janiceseymour liked this
-
katyblister liked this
-
pozycjonowanie- liked this
-
kenyatta reblogged this from culturalbytes
-
kenyatta liked this
-
culturalbytes posted this
I co-founded 
