Ariana Huffington’s recent visit to India, on January 2, spread awareness about mobile phone addiction which is a huge cause of concern among youth in India.
Many are falling prey to depression in larger numbers, spurring concerns about the spread of mental health problems that have been likened to an ‘epidemic’.
According to a study by NIMHANS, 24 per cent of youngsters between 18 to 25 years showed an incidence of problematic Internet usage. Another survey in the city of people between the age groups of 18 to 65 years found that addictive use was 1.3 per cent for Internet, 4.1 per cent for mobile phones and 3.5 per cent for social networking sites.
Smitha Samuel, a mother of two sons reveals the craze her sons have for playing games on their phones, “It’s annoying how both of them want to be glued to the phone the whole day, and how far they can go to pester me to give them my phone. They end up doing chores, help me out just for a few hours of playing games. I do feel technology is taking away family time and eventually children just want to be on their phones.”
Another mother of two teenage daughters, Ranmila Runsung speaks about the obsession her daughters have with their smart phones, “I have two teenagers and both are tech-savvy and hardly look beyond their phones. It’s like they’re living in a virtual world! These days, everything has become about one’s social media presence, wherever you go the food you eat should be Instagram-worthy rather than enjoyed.”
Dr Manoj Sharma from the SHUT (Services for healthy use of technology) Clinic at NIMHANS cautions us about the current scenario, “We have found many young adults between the age groups of 16 to 20 years constantly playing games on their mobile phones. Every individual spent about 10-12 hours playing online games which affected their lifestyle, created psychological withdrawals like outbursts when their phones were taken away, etc. According to our research, we have discovered that there has been an increase in such cases, and now we get about six to seven per week which was comparatively lesser last year. We help children by changing small things in their lifestyles as they don’t want to be treated like patients when they are brought to us. Some workshops are conducted to help them communicate their needs better, and we also work on stress management,” he adds further.
Varghese Matthew, a clinical psychologist at NIMHANS tells us that there’s always an increased feeling of wanting to go back to your phone as soon as you keep it away. “It interferes with your personal and occupational functioning, eventually many of these kids start skipping school, a lot of conflict takes places between them and their parents and self-care is also compromised,” he says.
So what could be the solution to this loosing battle? Matthew says, “There’s no proper intervention module to help kids but we have noticed that helping them realise that this is an actual problem is the first step to a cure. The next step is for parents to deviate from all negative conversations at home, and turning them into positive ones, and really getting to know what their children are upto.”
