VietNamNet Bridge – It is expected that the first counselling course for game addicts will open in HCM City on November 29, with 50 attendees.

Nguyen Thanh Nhan (sitting)

This special class was designed by the Southern Centre for Young Culture and Sports under the Central Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.

Nguyen Thanh Nhan, Deputy Director of the centre, said the course, named “Rehabilitation of online game and usefully using Internet”, is a class to help children to escape from the cyber-world to return to the real world and guide children in how to use the Internet in a helpful way.

According to Nhan, he researched similar models in South Korea and China before designing this programme. The programme includes three parts: feelings, physical training and social work. Every day participants will write out their real feelings on a piece of paper and put the paper into a “feelings box”. By consulting this box, organisers hope to devise suitable psychological measures to assist these game addicts.

Nhan said it is very difficult for children to immediately forget online games so physical training and social activities are needed for them. Participants will play various sports like basketball, badminton, tennis every day to improve their health. They will stay at the centre on weekends (totalling 16 days).

They will work in groups to search for useful documents and to write group reports based on information they found on the Internet. “They will still surf the Internet, but to serve useful purposes,” Nhan said.

During the course, participants will have time to do schoolwork.

(Source: ICTNews)