Net loss: Time to beat the bingewatching habit

Offset the imbalance that addiction to technology has introduced into your life

Last week, the Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic at the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans), received its first case of addiction to the streaming service, Netflix. A 26-yearold unemployed man approached them, saying he had begun to spend more than seven hours every day watching shows and movies . Manoj Kumar Sharma, a professor of clinical psychology, Nimhans, who heads the SHUT clinic, says the number of people approaching them to fight mental ailments which can be traced back to the Internet is on the rise. Those addicted to online gaming form a chunk of these.

When they set up the clinic — it specialises in treating technology-related medical conditions — in 2014, they received two cases a week. This year, the number of gaming addiction complaints has risen to eight a week. In June this year, the World Health Organization added gaming disorder to its compendium of International Classification of Diseases.

Streaming services, in which a show’s entire season can be viewed on any device at one go, raise viewers’ vulnerability to binge watching. People tend to stimulate the reward centre of the brain when they get to know what is happening next in their favourite show, say psychiatrists. This releases chemicals that trigger a mix of satiety and pleasure. The treatment modalities to fight addiction to gaming and streaming platforms run on similar lines. In the case of the streaming platforms addict, the doctors at Nimhans are deploying a mix of therapy and inducing behavioural changes which could wean him away from his addiction. Delhi-based psychiatrist, Samir Parekh, director of mental health and behavioural sciences, Fortis Healthcare, prescribes reserving four hours of screen-free time once a week to those addicted to the Net. The bottom line is to offset the imbalance that addiction to gadgets has introduced into their routines.

By any measure, the European Union’s (EU) handling of a vast influx of migrants from Africa and the West Asia has been a debacle. That said, some countries’ policies offer insights into how a better approach might look.

The EU has no common asylum policy, leaving it to the country of first entry. This places a disproportionate burden on Mediterranean nations such as Italy, where high search and rescue costs have engendered popular discontent.

Only 2.6% of the EU budget goes to managing migration and security. Yet leaving countries to their own devices allows everyone to see what works and what doesn’t. Italy and the Netherlands, for example, demonstrate two antipodal approaches. A person applying for asylum in Italy in early 2018 was likely to wait at least two years until a first instance decision, and a further two years until a first appeal decision. At the end of 2017, there were more than 150,000 pending applications. By contrast, the Netherlands seeks to provide asylum seekers a first-instance decision in 17 days, and an appeal decision within a further 35 days at the most. Those who are refused must depart within 28 days.

Italy’s drawn-out process doesn’t appear to protect the rights of refugees any better than the Netherlands’ does. On the contrary, the Dutch government provides asylum seekers