Can screen time be extremely dangerous for us?

BY-Rajeev Choudhary

Today, honestly, an average is taken that how much time a person spends on mobile, laptop or iPad, then perhaps the results will be very surprising. If the middle class is seen in this, then maybe some people spend 4 to 6 hours working people 10 hours and some people maybe spend more than 12 hours on the screen. Reads, writes, watches a lot – apart from this he talks to his friends.

If seen, this world of screen time has progressed so much that even children are seriously demanding their own phone. Sometimes in the name of studies, for online classes, to chat with your friends. That is, for everything or everyone from social media, WhatsApp groups to YouTube, to catch up. It has become a central part of connecting with a virtual or modern world. Even if someone is not on social media, he is being considered backward.

However, for those whose children are getting older, there is now a growing concern about how much time an eight-year-old spends playing games! Or maybe he is busy with some bad things instead of his age compatibility! He’s currently on-screen, between another and unknown world – he’s playing on a mobile or iPad. Is it not like this, is there someone else playing with his innocent mind and mind?

As we see that every type of intoxicant product, be it beedi, cigarettes, tobacco packets or bottles of liquor, beer etc., is written on the product “Statutory warning – use of alcohol or tobacco can be fatal”. Will it be possible to see on-screen in the days to come, “Statutory Warning – Excessive Screen Time Can Be Very Dangerous for Us?”

In recent years, there has been a growing concern that screen time is harming the mental health of children and young people. How much it is affecting their thinking, talking, sitting, apart from their personal and family life! Every so often, there are also widespread studies that are worrying—for example, fear, inferiority complex, depression, self-harm, suicide, and unhappiness. All these diseases have increased dramatically after 2012 in young adolescents, especially girls and young women. This study clearly links these diseases to the rise of social media.

So the question becomes, has screen time on smartphones destroyed a generation of us? Because a report in the Sunday Times suggests that social media is behind the rise in teen suicides. In 2018, the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, also compared the risk of social media to a pandemic. Because the patients of its addiction consider themselves normal. But internally, he has become very weak mentally.

Because today fear, satire, sex, vulgarity are roaming freely on the screen like animals in the jungle, a human being is being intimidated in the form of nation, religion or even his ethnic-racial identity is not destroyed. Political parties, social organizations, religious organizations are also making good use of his fear. Good and bad satires are also available on screen. Along with this, from the method of sex to erotic material, there is also an abundance of material available here.

For example, when you go to the library and think about reading something, then it is in your hands that what you have to study today! A book on literature or history, a romantic story based on science, geography or even love! But there is nothing like it in the world of screen. Here when a person, youth, child, woman or man scrolls the screen of the mobile, what will be the next scene in front of him – he cannot choose it himself! He just scrolls, the content is coming in front of him automatically. All these things are as if everything, every fear, communal hatred, political falsehood, rumours, etc. have all been left open in the field!

In such a situation, the question becomes whether the person is sad or happy with all these things? To test this, 72,000 people aged 10 to 80 years were surveyed in Britain. The organization asked people how much they used social media, and how they rated their satisfaction with life. Is she sad or happy? Now look at the effect – people who spend more screen time on social media. They were found more unhappy. Those who never used it were also found to be more unhappy. But those who used moderate amounts were found to be the happiest. Although it may seem surprising why people who never use social media are less happy! So imagine that most of these people are cut off from one major means of communicating with their friends, friends. They are only sad that why they could not join, but such people are found in very few numbers. Whereas on average, people are less happy the more they use them.

However, there is not yet a huge amount of concrete data behind this. But it has become abundantly clear that screen time has become a major epidemic of mental health issues. Whose symptoms and patients will appear in the form of huge figures later on. If so, then it should also be assumed that the next epidemic will be social media and there will be only one symptom of the epidemic and that will be excessive screen time use!

BY-Rajeev Choudhary Author Blogger