Teenage Computer Addict Commits Suicide

A strange story coming out of Malaysia (hat tip to Zaim Bakar Blog). Apparently, a 16-year-old Chinese boy committed suicide by electrocuting himself after being told by his father that he needed to cut down on his internet surfing. According to the father:

"He wanted me to upgrade his computer. Instead I gave him an ultimatum. ... I told him I would upgrade his computer if he studied at least seven hours a day. He did not reply. That was the last I spoke to him."

Eight hours later, Yap found his son’s lifeless body. He had electrocuted himself with a wire tied around his left wrist in his own room.

Yap and his wife, identified only as Then, 48, rushed Way Chung to nearby Assunta Hospital but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

...

[Yap] said he found a note on Way Chung’s computer. "It was his will. He left his dumb bells and MP3 player to two of his close friends. The printed note was left on the top of the keyboard so that no one would miss it."

"Ah Boy, as we called him, was a computer addict. To him, it was his life. The first thing he did when he came home from school was to switch on the machine. Now that it is the school holidays, he was spending even more time on it. He surfed the Net for music downloads and slept in the wee hours. He even forgot to eat his meals."

Yap said he now regrets buying the computer for his son.

"If I had followed my head and refrained from buying the computer for him, Ah Boy would still be alive today. I had never agreed to young children like him spending too much time on the Internet," said Yap, adding that his son was active in taekwondo and basketball in school. (Source)

I have heard of several cases up in Korea where young men have died because of playing computer games in the PC Bahngs for too long a time (frequently over 24 hours at a stretch); however, I don't recall a similar situation where a teenager has killed him (or her)self because their parents began to limit their computer time.

To my Western readers, that the father asked his son to study at least seven hours a day may seem excessive by Western standards but it is not all that unusual here in Asia. Asians place a very high premium on education (much more so than Americans). In Korea, secondary school students normally get to school by 8 a.m. or so, and will study at the school (with occasional breaks) up through 10-11 p.m. The study regime is not as stringent here in S'pore as it is up in Korea as the competition to get into the universities isn't as fierce here; however, there is still a strong orientation toward getting a good education, usually coming at the expense of extra-curricular activities, such as sports. (There are school sports and other ECAs here, but they're not as big a part of a secondary school student's life as they are back in the US.)

In the meantime, I think it's important that families be sure to keep computers and television sets out of the kid's bedrooms, so that their usage can be limited and monitored by the parents. If you're going to let the kids have something in their bedrooms, make sure that they have good books to read.