Chinese doctors say children addicted to staring at screens playing video games could be suffering from a clinical disorder.

In a documentary set to air in America next week, PBS speaks to Chinese medical professionals who are among the first in the world to treat video game addiction with a clinical definition.

The New York Times reports the program will reveal the tragic effects addiction can have, showing children caught in the grip of a video game playing cycle.

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The excessive use of video games in China means kids are playing for hours on end and are not breaking to eat, sleep or even go to the bathroom.

You need to be careful about how much screen time your kids are having. Photo: Getty

Remarkably some are so caught up in their virtual world they view reality as fake, says the documentary called Web Junkie.

The film is primarily shot at Daxing Boot Camp: a centre in Beijing that treats young internet addicts, most teenage boys.

Internet and screen addiction is not yet considered a clinical condition in Australia or America, however experts have long warned about the perils of too much technology time for children.

“We’re throwing screens at children all day long, giving them distractions rather than teaching them how to self-soothe, to calm themselves down,” Harvard clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair, writes in The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.

“A child’s brain develops rapidly,” she writes. “Young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.”

The physical health effects can also be dangerous. 

Research by Optometry Australia linked increased screen time for children, combined with less “green time” outdoors, to increased rates of short-sightedness.

“As a human race, we are making ourselves more and more short-sighted,” the group’s resident optometrist Luke Arundel told The New Daily in April. 

“Our visual system is geared for what we used to be doing — hunting and gathering, looking into the distance, and occasionally focusing in closer,” he said.