The previous paragraph was about preparing my doctoral proposal, and I also couldn’t help thinking about the topics of two fellow students in my cohort—one working on the environment, the other on the network. In fact, both are academic directions I had envisioned in previous years, and I will eventually return to these two themes as well, so looking at my two fellow students’ topics, I couldn’t help feeling a bit covetous and eager.
5ningning wants to do a phenomenological study of the network, and Senior Brother Shengli suggested that we might as well first discuss the issue of “internet addiction.” I took that to heart too, and have had some thoughts, but I have never managed to find the time to write them down casually. Now that the original opening defense scheduled for the 10th has been postponed until next semester (indeed, the Spring Festival came too early this year, and by the 10th there would hardly be anyone left on campus), I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and write a few essays.
Three years ago I already put forward the banner of “philosophy of online games,” and even today I have not yet renounced it. “Media Ontology” is only the topic of my doctoral dissertation, but whether I should elevate it into the banner of Ancient School Philosophy, I still have some reservations; whereas the concept of “online games” may perhaps open up a richer semantic space.
“Internet addiction” seems to be a phenomenon with Chinese characteristics, or rather, there is some kind of “internet addiction with Chinese characteristics” — “among people addicted to the internet abroad, the concentration is in the 20–30 age group, whereas in China it is concentrated in the 15–20 age group; abroad, the content of internet addiction is relatively dispersed, whereas in China 80%–90% is concentrated in online games; abroad, extreme cases of internet addiction are rare, whereas the extremity of Chinese internet addiction also exceeds that abroad. ”
When ordinary people talk about “internet addiction,” they often say that it is simply excessive immersion in the “virtual world,” ultimately leading to escape from the “real world.” Is that really so? For the moment let us set aside whether the internet is truly a “virtual world,” but is the world escaped from by those addicted to the internet really the “real world”? Or might the situation be this: the reason children flee from it is that our so-called “real world” itself has first gone wrong, so that children are precisely turning to the internet because they instinctively try to repair their world?
To be more specific, what exactly are those children who are deeply addicted to the internet escaping from? — School, homework, reading. And is that what is called the real world? Angry parents try to pull their children out of the internet, but where do they want them to return to? — To the desk. They seem to take it for granted that no longer being trapped in the internet and instead burying one’s head in textbooks is some kind of process that can be called “returning to reality.” But do textbooks present children with the “real world”? — Mathematics, physics, and chemistry present an abstract world of ideas, while Chinese and foreign languages present things of ancient people or foreigners… Although no one would accuse a child who loves studying of “being addicted to a virtual world,” we really cannot say that the world of burying oneself in books is any more “real” than immersion in the internet, unless by “real” one means in the sense of studying well so as to make money in the future.
The “real world” is the human world, the world in which people interact with one another. So where are children supposed to obtain real interpersonal interaction? Nowadays (especially in China), children in cities can already hardly find companions among siblings or next-door neighbors; so what about interacting with classmates? How are they supposed to interact? Interact about problems in studying? To expect children to get together all day long to discuss schoolwork is, first, unrealistic; second, the content of such interaction is not a real thing either. Talk about television, ball games, and celebrities? These things are not the real world either. Or are we to ask children to chat about household matters like gossiping aunts and neighbors? … These situations are either unrealistic, or irrelevant to reality. Moreover, the reason these forms of interaction are not realistic enough is, more importantly, that they are all merely talking about some external thing—mathematical formulas, celebrities, or household gossip alike—where the children are at most chatting as onlookers, not as real participants. A few children gathered together can only gossip about how so-and-so did this or that; they cannot talk about how “you” are, how “I” am.
And as children grow, they will not be satisfied with being mere spectators of the world; they long to participate in the world in a real way, to find their place in the world, and to establish their own role.
And “games” are the first step by which children try to build their own roles—whether they are boys’ competitive games (“I won, you lost”) or girls’ intimate games, whether “I am Ultraman, you are the big monster,” “I am the doctor, you are the patient,” “I take one step, you take one step”… Most games highlight the existence of “I.” Through games, it is “I,” not “it” or “he,” that truly enters the center of our world. I become a part of this lifeworld, rather than an external chatterer.
Adults do not need games so much, because they often already have a more stable role—their occupation, in whose name they can participate in social interaction and obtain recognition. But children have no occupation. If they too long to interact with others and gain others’ recognition in some identity that belongs to them, where can they seek it? Only in games. And in the concrete forest where there are no siblings or next-door neighbors, the space left for children’s games has already been squeezed to a terribly small size.
But the internet has opened up a vast space, and online games can provide children with a stage on which to shape their personal identity. You say such an identity or role is virtual? Then what identity counts as real? Does a label like “No. 34, Class 2, Grade 1” become any more real?
“Internet addiction” is not a problem of the internet, but a problem with the so-called “real world.” Children, especially those who even lack care within the family, long to obtain genuine attention and recognition as the roles that belong to them, thereby establishing a real sense of self or a sense of existence—not as spectators, not as machines, but as the protagonist at the center of the stage, playing a role of their own in the world—this longing is hard to satisfy both in the concrete forest and in the fill-the-duck factory. The internet has not ruined children; it has saved them, allowing them once again to have a stage on which to play themselves.
I am not saying that internet addiction is a good thing. As the saying goes, “when something reaches an extreme, it must reverse itself”; any best thing, if it lacks the necessary understanding and guidance, may well move toward the extreme. And the more powerful something is, once it gets out of control, the greater the harm it can cause. Floods are destructive disasters, but water is indispensable. The spread of internet addiction may indeed be a flood-like monster, but the internet or games themselves are not the flood. Water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it. Because someone has sunk to the bottom of the water, to demand that all boats be dragged ashore is obviously absurd; likewise, because someone has become excessively immersed in the internet and caused disastrous consequences, to drive all children out of the internet is also absurd.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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