Experts warn that Internet addicts are getting younger all the time.

Tao Hongkai, a high-profile campaigner who toured around 20 provinces and cities talking about the seriousness of Internet addiction, once said the youngest patient in China was only two years old.

Without confirming that fact, Tao Ran, the director of Beijing-based China Youth Mental Health Center, told China Daily that Internet addicts fall into two extremes -one is more young preschool children, the other promising college students.

According to an official estimate released in 2007 by China Youth Association for Network Development, more than nine percent of Chinese youngsters are addicted to the Web. Some of the signature symptoms include being introverted, impulsive and afraid of people.

According to Tao, 60 percent of them are obsessed with the Internet because of a lack of parental care, which he said emphasized the addiction as "parenting negligence".

Tao said any physical therapy should not be done alone. It should be accompanied by love and care offered by parents, friends and teachers, he said.

(China Daily June 3, 2009)