Recently, a 14-year-old child in Grade 8th of a prominent school of NCR visited me accompanied by his parents with the presenting complaints of self-withdrawal, depressed mood, restlessness, irritation, insomnia, and difficulty concentrating on any activity. The symptoms, as told, appeared 8 months post the child got his first personal tablet during Covid-19 for attending his online classes.
Initially the gadget was used by the child just to attend his classes, but subsequently its usage increased manifolds for other online activities such as playing online games, browsing various sites, and maintaining social media accounts. Slowly he began to refuse playing any outdoor physical games. Once the physical classes started at school, it became difficult for him to leave his tab and he refused to go to school. On continuous persuasion of parents when he started going to school, there were constant complains regarding lack of concentration, poor listening and social skills, hyper activity, aggression and various other learning-related problems of the child.
Apart from the above, he exhibited compulsive behavior to use his tab for at least 4-6 hrs at a stretch. This changed into addiction, to an extent that he started to skip his meals and appeared weak with alleviated behavioral issues such as restlessness, poor eye contact, low mood, anger and insomnia.
Such cases are not uncommon these days but we, as parents, remain at a fix regarding its management. Being a parent myself, few practical tips that can be easily followed are – Do not use tech gadgets as pacifiers for young children (a common sight these days). Explore other engaging options which are of interest for your child like any outdoor sport, listening to music, cooking together, dancing, playing with friends, etc.
Parental support, talking and co-use of internet with children encourages less internet screen behavior. Spending some time of the day together, may be any meal, can be decided as the family time in which all family members just talk to each other, and no gadgets should be kept nearby. That 30–45 mins can be dedicated to any discussion on contemporary topic or just knowing how the day went off for each one.
Its important for the parents to make children realise the importance of having hobbies which are a source of stress reduction and relaxation. Playing some family board games such as ludo, cards, Catan, etc. which involves all family members. Modelling the behavior as expected from children is also quite significant.
Last but not the least do not ignore the mental wellbeing of your child, if required seek timely professional help.
(The author is a counselling psychologist; Faculty, Deptt of Psychology, Daulat Ram College, Delhi University.)
