Recently, 16-year-old Deng Senshan was beaten to death by his three “supervisors” at an Internet rehabilitation center in southern China. All three supervisors have been arrested.

Apparently, the boy’s father paid about $1,000 to give his son a month’s worth of rehabilitation at the Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp.

But instead of treatment, the boy’s father said that his son was put in solitary confinement shortly after his arrival and then beaten to death for running too slowly.

This is so sad. And for what, spending too much time online.

Crazy stats:

• China has the world’s largest number of Internet users with 338 million — more than the entire population of the United States

• More than 10 million of the country’s 100 million teenage web surfers are Internet addicts

There is controversy over the treatments for Internet addiction and how it is diagnosed. The health ministry last month banned the use of electroshock therapy to treat Internet addiction. [tech.yahoo.com]