You know you're spending too much time online when a government agency wants you to go through addiction counseling, right?

In the past week I've seen at least ten news articles or blog postings come to me on the Shanghai summer camp "to help online addicts get back to normal," as the China Daily puts it. The program is "experimental." The 40 camp participants were between 14 and 22 years old and were screened by professional counselors, the Daily says.

Reactions are mixed. It's easy for paranoid Westerners to visualize a kind of Chinese Gulag where teens are sent away for reprogramming after being exposed to too much Western influence online. But in all fairness, there is a group lobbying to see Internet Addiction Disorder included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Which is not to say I do (or don't) believe in it.

The China Daily's story estimates that 10% of Shanghai youth have some degree of Internet addiction. The article's description of volunteers in Hongkou District in Shanghai canvasing the district's 70 or so Internet cafes trying to coax teenagers into leaving them draws up images of Teen Challenge workers trying to lure urban young people away from drugs in America a few decades ago.

An article in The Scotsman was a little more specific about the problems of Internet addiction. The article says the children and youth involved are "addicted to online games, porn and cybersex" and that the psychotherapy-oriented approach of the Shanghai summer camp was "softer" than the Internet Addiction Treatment Centre near Beijing where military drills are used to break the addiction.

MSNBC pointed out the relevance of the problem for foreign investors with their headline "Online gaming reaches a frenzy in China" and its subheading, "Addiction issues push government to further regulate the booming market." Ah yes, more regulation.

If the government comes to view online gaming as a social evil, or even a mental health issue, how will that change the potential for profit in world's largest online market place? Time will tell...