So report immediately to the Beijing Military General Hospital, net fiends. Or check yourself against this Xinhua article, with details of China's official diagnostic definition of that scourge of spotty teenagers (and, ahem, adult nerds), Internet addiction:

BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese doctors released the country's first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction over the weekend, amid efforts to address an increasing number of psychological problems that reportedly result from Internet overuse.

Tao Ran, a medical expert at Beijing's Military General Hospital, where the definition was developed, said it was also the first time for China to officially designate hospital psychiatric units to treat such cases.

Symptoms of addiction included yearning to get back online, mental or physical distress, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.

Well, I dunno. Remove the "yearning to get back online" part and it sounds like a diagnostic definition of adolescence to me. While I do recall that as a painful and afflicted period, I'm not sure there's a therapy for it per se. Other than maybe getting laid, which I'm pretty sure will not be among the therapies authorized at the Military General Hospital.

The definition, based on a study of more than 1,300 problematic computer users, classifies as addicts those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one symptom in the past three months.

"Eighty percent of addicts can be cured with treatment, which usually lasts about three months," said Tao. He did not describe the treatment, however.

Seems like a glaring omission, considering that prior reports have suggested such radical measures as electric shock therapy (apparently at the same Military General Hospital) as treatment. Parents, you may want to look into that before consigning your little digital emperor to pretty girls in white for a spell of deprogramming (pun intended). He may come back cured of Internet addiction but with a hysterical fear of Beethoven symphonies.

According to the China Youth Association for Network Development, Internet-addicted youths are more likely suffer frustration in interpersonal relations than their peers.

See? I was totally ahead of my time. I had frustration in interpersonal relations way back in the early eighties, when there was no public Internet and the computing state-of-the-art was the Tandy TRS-80, which was difficult to be addicted to when compared to siren calls of television, touch football or reading the text off of cereal boxes. Or maybe Atari 2600 consoles had the same effect. That would explain some of my own persistent symptoms.

Those aged 18 to 30 account for nearly half of the online population in China, which has been estimated at 210 million as of 2007 by the China Internet Network Information Center.

Time to update those stats. If Internet addiction is a constant proportion of the overall user population then there may be fifty percent more of them out there lurking their bedrooms than medical authorities currently predict. On the other hand, given that youth are likely early adopters, it may be that there is an unnoticed swell of internet addicted grannies and peasants out there, slipping beneath the medical radar. Or perhaps they're less susceptible than teenaged males to the blandishments of the fluorescent screen. Ask your granny if she's on QQ. If so, worry.

About 10 percent of young users suffer Internet addiction, an earlier survey revealed, and about 70 percent are male.

This is a little unclear, but if the meaning is that about 70% of Internet addicts are male, then Imagethief sees this as a clear wakeup call for Chinese Internet providers to improve the content they offer to Chinese women. I mean, where are you people? Women hold up half the sky, so start addicting them to the Internet. Your advertisers will thank you.

Clockwork Orange

Had enough Youku, have you?