Have you ever heard about Hikikomori? It is a word suggested by a Japanese psychologist, which means the extremely introvert teenagers. They isolate themselves from the society and refuse to leave their homes. In recent years, the existence of Hikikomori becomes common in Hong Kong and they are due to 3 factors, including technology advancement, society pressure and family fondness. First of all, people dependent on computers in their lives as the technology become advanced. They could not live without computers.
They learn, they work, they entertain, and they even communicate with others by using computers. They chat with their friends by MSN, ICQ, Facebook and so on. As the face-to-face conversations, which involved not only words but some nonverbal skills, such as tone of speech, eye contact and interaction with your conversation partners, among people are reduced, the Hikikomori have rare chance to communicate with others for real. Even though they have that chance, they may not know how to get along with people as they get used to chat using texts.
As time passes, they may find that they repeat this failure again and again. Then they may be afraid of it and even evade having face-to-face conversations with others. They hide themselves in their own world and not willing to open up anymore. It could be seen that technology advancement is one of the factors of the existence of Hikikomori in Hong Kong. Besides, society pressure worsens the problem as well. Since the Hikikomori isolate them and barely communicate with others, they are deemed as strange and odd and not generally accepted by the majority.
Because of their depressions, they may quit from school and stay at home to play video games from day to night. They may even become an “expert” of play video games. As they have found a fulfillment which could not be found in reality, they keep indulging in the virtual world. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is a realistic city. A good academic result is the only index of success and only successful person would be appreciated by the society. They feel like being dumped and not willing to get out of the virtual world at all. Then he society would definitely not accept them. This is obviously a vicious spiral and the society pressure does cause the problem of Hikikomori. Apart from technology and society, family is also an important cause of Hikikomori. In Hong Kong, single-child family is the most commonly seen. Therefore, the parents spoil their own child so much. They let him/her to do whatever they like and take his/her full swing. Even their child quitted from school and not willing to leave home, they do not deter their child from doing so.
On the other hand, as there is a generation gap between parents and child and the child does not have any siblings, he/she could not confide with others or express themselves. This aggravates the phenomenon of Hikikomori. All in all, technology is not the only cause of the existence of Hikikomori. The society and the families have to take the responsibility too. In fact, the individuals could help to tackle the problem—try to accept them and encourage them to open up. So why don’t we start from us and give a hand to them?
