Outreach program seeks to bring teenage hermits and net junkies back on track

Mr Wa

In a bid to help bring teenage hermits back into society, as well as to rid youth of Internet addiction, S.K.H. Macau Social Services Coordination Office rolled out its proactive outreach program yesterday afternoon.
According to the 2012 official figures from the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS), youngsters aged between 12 and 24 who are potentially at risk of turning into recluses, or who are already hermits, account for 2.2 percent of the region’s entire youth population. Furthermore, at least 25,619 teenagers in the territory may have developed an over-obsession with the Internet or are potentially at risk of doing so.
The office’s initiative, entitled “WE CONNECT,” was said to be devised as a play on the English word “reconnect”; its aim is to help achieve the social welfare group’s targets of rebuilding self-esteem in youth and helping them to re-­enter the society from which they shy away.
Respectively in 2010 and 2012, the IAS authorities carried out studies into the teenagers of the above two categories. Their findings suggested that the daily behaviors, life format and sentiments of local teens in recent years have been significantly impacted by the two issues. The ever-changing social environment even added to the pressure on them, which indirectly hurt their development in the long run.
A 23-year-old casino croupier, who identified himself as Wa, disclosed in the media briefing how he lost his motivation and became reluctant to meet people at the age of 14. “Most of the time I was unhappy at school, and when the social network in school fell apart, I lost all my friends,” said Wa. “I started to just stay at home surfing the Internet, watching films, playing video games and sleeping.”
His negative behaviors have lead him to clash with his mother on multiple occasions, who has also lost weight due to stress because of his self-­abandonment.
Wa’s mother even took radical measures in a desperate attempt to revive her son’s passion for life, but only exacerbated his ordeal. Cabell Hoi, team leader at the office, said that the whole scheme was family-­oriented in order to furnish tailor-made social support for the teens.
Apart from that aspect, highlights of the outreach program are peer and team counseling, skills training, and home visits. To treat those exclusively active on the net, social workers from the program were said to go to any lengths to reach them online on the basis of their preferred virtual platforms. Staff reporter