VietNamNet Bridge – Flaying tattooing and listening to music that causes bloodcurdling sensations are hobbies that harm physical and mental health of Vietnamese teenagers.



i-dosing - the kind of music that is mixed by sharp explosive noise – is considered “digital drug.” When listening to this music, listeners will fee scared and satisfied.

“This kind of music can be mixed by specialized software. I tried and I was shocked. The feeling was indescribable. Young people can be highly addicted to this kind of music,” says Mr. Nguyen Xuan Hieu, director of an audio company in Hanoi.

This so-called i-dosing is apparently a new form of digital drug that are audio files designed to induce drug-like effects.

In Vietnam, i-dosing is shared among youngsters on social networks. Despite warnings of harmful effects when listening to i-dosing on websites, the number of people who download i-dosing is rising remarkably.

“My friends talked a lot about i-dosing. I downloaded it from the Internet and tried. It made me dazzled, giddy and buzzing in my ears,” one wrote on an online forum about his first experience with i-dosing.

Meanwhile, many teens commented: “that’s music!”, “music must be strong and make me blow up”, “to be more satisfied with i-dosing, you should use headphones that cover your entire ears and sit on a dark room, alone.. Many teens wrote that once they listened to i-dosing, they did not want to enjoy ‘lighter’ music.



This kind of music has been warned to harm listener’s health in many countries in the world.

Some teens favor flaying tattoos. To have tattoos of this type, people have to accept extreme pain. Tattoo makers use specialized knives to flay pieces of skin. After that they cover with chemicals over it or to let these wounds to become scars, which emerge as terrified patterns. To have such tattoos, many teens went to Thailand.

Mr. Nguyen Tien Hai, a senior tattoo maker, said that Vietnamese tattoo makers are not skilled enough to make these kind of tattoos. Only rich people can get such tattoos by going to Thailand or Taiwan.

Nam Nguyen