Presenter: Billie JD Porter
Shown: 25th August 2015
The pressures a Chinese teenager face are arguably the most stressful of any population. 'Problem Children' are those who can't focus, smoke, drink or generally disobey elders. Their way of dealing with these teenagers is to send them to bootcamps reminiscent of military bootcamps. They are disciplined, made to follow orders, daily, for up to nine months including cleaning toilets and exercises such as standing, staring at a spot on the blackboard for periods of time. Another huge part of these programs to 'fix' problem children, which we would consider completely and utterly normal teenagers, are long arduous marches which can last up to two weeks. On these expeditions the students walk in excess of 40km, sleep in trucks and have buckets as lavatories. Is this the correct way to help? In many cases children are sent to these bootcamps due to addictions to online gaming. In China it's thought that up to 24 million teenagers are addicted to online gaming, even with an online gaming population of 368 million (motherjones.com, 2015) that seems an awful lot.
In fact, online gaming is such a popular activity over there is has developed to a giant scale spectator sport. Pro gamers are bought and sold, a la footballers, earning up to six figure salaries. The players are idolised by young girls with fans obsessing over them, they're seen as sex symbols, the boy band members of the gaming world. Would all this obsession over virtual reality worlds not hint towards a generation desperate to escape the pressures of the modern world? Surely an addiction rate that high shows how hyperreality is becoming ever more present, with the virtual and physical worlds merging, quite definitely, into one.
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