Screen Addiction Killed Learning: COVID – OpEd

“Excess of everything is bad and there is need to have applications to reduce and monitor screen time.” – – PM Modi

The COVID-19 pandemic in India and across the world created the crisis to the education system when schools and colleges were temporarily shut down. A total of 320 million learners in India were adversely affected by the pandemic and had to shift to E-learning. This unexpected shift to E-learning led to the development of many health problems in the students mainly related to ‘Eyesight’ and psychosocial stress. The COVID-19 acted as a catalyst to the foreseen problems of over dependence on gadgets and has raised serious concerns of negative effects.

Ever since the country-wide lockdown due to COVID-19 began in India a substantial increase in children and young adults with complaints of blurring of vision, dry eye, headache, and diplopia have been noticed. Eye related issues like digital eye strain (DES) also known ascomputer vision syndrome (CVS), Dry eye disease and increased risk of myopia. This may be a global phenomenon.

Of the over 451 million monthly active users in India, 66 million are in the age bracket of 5–11 years, who access Internet on devices of family members, as per an IAMAI report titled, “India Internet 2019.” In an open online survey conducted through social media platforms for 2 weeks, 93.6% of respondents reported an increase in their screen time since the lockdown. With the education system itself shifting to the digital mode, parents are walking an emotional tightrope now, stuck between the educational demands of their children and the need to take care of their well-being.

Gaming Led to Screen Addiction

Video games have been present for many years, children are now using them more continuously and indiscriminately nowadays because of the “technological boom”. Dr Rachna K Singh, Mental wellness expert explains, “Screen addiction is a struggle these days for adults and children alike. However, the detrimental impact of unchecked usage can bear serious consequences for children as their minds are still developing. Screen usage can hamper children’s cognitive development, poor sleep hygiene, lower grades and poor social skills.”

The prevalence of addiction to mobile phones, video games, and mobile gaming is undeniably increasing in India. There has been a noticeable surge in the number of people experiencing addiction or excessive usage syndromes related to mobile phones, gaming, and video games. Mobile phone games are convenient to be played everywhere, are fast paced, full of fantasy and engaging animation like ‘My little Pony’. This gets the child addicted in such a manner that he fails to feel satisfied with the time spent and is excited to continuethe gamenot caring about the precious time wasted.

School closures during the COVID-19 lockdown, now during peak summers and winter pollutions have ushered in lifestyle behavior changes including a significant increase in screen time and raised serious concerns of worsening eyesight issues. Regulating the duration of E-learning, reducing the number of hours of screen time, ensuring adequate lighting, taking breaks, promoting healthy lifestyle habits like increasing outdoor activities are recommended to improve the eye health of the students.

The Way Forward

The schools would need to be strict as to have ‘Mobile gadget free zone’. 50 years back there was no difference in night and day playing outdoor games continued until it was too dark to see, and we stayed up half the night telling stories.

Covid may have enhanced the spiral to screens, but parents and schools are both responsible for allowing it to continue. Instead of trying to get back to where we were pre-Covid, some of the schools instead of restricting use of gadgets continue to encourage the use of gadgets even while giving home assignments thereby increasing screen time and expect teachers to fall in line behind it. Up to grade 10 there should be No home assignments to be submitted ‘Online’. This step will improve their written expression as well as their writing and speed.

Avoid constant love gifts of gadgets. I also blame the parents who themselves may be busy to keep the child happy to make the child food they provide a gadget to keep the child engaged which over the years becomes ‘Screen addiction’ and create little monsters. Kids do suffer tech tantrums when their devices are taken away. They show all the signs of addiction withdrawal. It’s either the phone/screen time that the parents give into, if it’s not physically hurting anyone, who am I to say no?”

It’s why so many kids completely disrespect teachers, parents and others. They all live in the same house and live parallel lives and enjoy phone time more than family time. Interactions have reduced and I see parents have no reasonable authority or control over their kids and it takes me back to my generation as children and parents. But there is a red line you can’t cross then to repent later.

Technology is not the be all and end all of education, the schools need to have tight controls as it is ultimately turning destructive to the educational environment of young children.Online assignments have made things easy for the teachers but they in turn are ruining the health of their students and the grey matter is not being exercised adequately.Discard as much gadgets as you can and take the education system back to the old school learning with limited computer classes.

Prime Minister Modi on Discussion on Examinations (‘Pariksha pe Chharcha’2024) had also to talk about use of dedicated mobile applications and tools to monitor screen time. One can thus imagine the seriousness of the problem where the Prime Minister had to talk about ‘Monitoring Screen Time’. He also advocated the establishment of family rules and regulations, including no use of electronic gadgets during dinner, and suggested creating no gadget zones within homes. Acknowledging the inevitability of technology in today’s world, the Prime Minister underscored the importance of viewing it not as a burden but as a tool that must be used effectively.

Tech companies have developed, expanded, and exploited the market of school gadgets to sell thousands of inexpensive devices and application services to make huge profits. COVID indirectly was a blessing for the IT industry, and it has been booming since then at the cost of the health of the children.

I thank myself that in my post-retirement second innings I’m the Headmaster of a boy’s residential school where no gadgets are allowed other than having IT classes in the computer lab. Parents come for admission with one of the reasons is to discipline their ward and free them from screen gadget addiction. In our school days we hardly had students wearing spectacles and they were teased around. Now one comes across classes where over 25% are wearing specs.

References:

The National Institutes of Health