SENIORITY NO BAR

THE ELDERLY ARE AT LEAST AS VULNERABLE AS THE YOUTH WHEN IT COMES TO INTERNET ADDICTION

Abhinav Lal, 63, was looking forward to a quiet retired life with his 60-year-old wife (who does not wish to be named) after he left his job as a banker in Mumbai. The childless couple spent the two years of the Covid lockdown catching up with friends online and watching the latest TV serials. Night after night, Lal would talk for hours with old college friends on Facebook Messenger. He soon began to sleep with his phone under the pillow, a habit he had been firmly against before the pandemic. In January 2022, Lal began to attend counselling for textaphrenia, the pathological fear of not being able to send or receive texts, after he nearly hit his wife because she had accidentally turned off the wi-fi in the middle of his chat session. “We don’t get good signal at home,” says Lal. “I just felt so angry for a few minutes. I had never felt such rage, at not being able to talk to people online.”

“The overuse and over-reliance on the virtual world is as much of an issue with elders as it is with the young,” says Dr Kedar Tilwe, a psychiatrist at the Fortis Hospital in Mumbai. “This has been more common after the pandemic as people began to rely heavily on the internet for information and relationshipbuilding. They got used to instant news, instant chatting, instant answers, making the return to offline difficult.”

Indeed, a 2020 study by the HRD ministry reported 5.2 hours of daily screen time among those above 65 years old when most doctors recommend no more than two hours of daily screen time in addition to work-related screen time. Unregulated and irrational use of digital devices is shown to have an adverse effect on one’s physical and mental health. During Covid, the most commonly reported adverse effects on the elderly were panic, self-diagnosis and insomnia. “People passively absorb what is online without using discretion and judgement,” says internal medicine specialist Dr Farah Ingale in Mumbai. “I had patients who were self-medicating for Covid based on online reports. Or patients who could not sleep because of something they read on WhatsApp. They treat online information as the gospel truth.” Not only does their constant doomscrolling sharpen their anxieties, they also fall prey to fake news.

“We are seeing a growth in social media- and internetrelated anxiety among the elderly since the pandemic as more people are indoors and offline experiences have reduced,” says Dr Manoj Sharma, founder of the digital rehab centre at NIMHANS. So, when a message from Zomato told 77-year-old Laxmi Mala that she was now an ‘ambassador’ for a restaurant she frequently ordered from, the Noidabased widow felt immediately blissful. Having lived all by herself for the past two years in order to escape Covid, the diabetic and breast cancer survivor says the “language of apps, social media and OTT platforms” made her feel “socially connected in the midst of utter loneliness”. The problem arose when she began to depend on the digital world for comfort and joy. “My son in Canada began to grow concerned as I became moody and my sleep started getting disturbed due to staring at the screen so often. He then insisted that I go for online therapy,” says Mala, who now limits screen time to six hours a day, down from 14. “I haven’t grown up with the internet, the language was very flattering and I forgot it was not a real person. My therapist made me understand that online words were the work of marketing agencies.” Mala is now slowly returning to reality.

ing out. Researchers at the Union College in New York conducted two surveys of nearly 600 people in the city in 2015 and found that those who constantly needed online feedback had higher levels of self-doubt and attachment anxiety. “Those who have a lot of self-doubt try to compensate by having a large social circle online,” says Dr Harish Shetty, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist. “The same people would behave entirely differently online.” This is also true of trolling. Micro behaviour that lets our brains pick up emotional cues offline are missing online. “You cannot see how your words impact another person in cyberspace, as it is largely textual exchanges. It is easier to write something hurtful in the virtual world than say it to a person’s face,” says Dr Sharma.

Anxiety brought on by doomscrolling, or the continuous exposure to negative news—war, crime, Covid, economic catastrophe—is another consequence of online obsession. “I doomscroll,” says Bengaluru’s Kapur, “so does my wife. We cannot sleep till we have read the news on our mobile phones, and it is mostly always negative.” The Wakefit study found that 57 per cent of its respondents doomscrolled every night. Such anxiety peaked during the pandemic when the deluge of information—as well as misinformation—played havoc on the mental health of a people locked down.

But the lure of the device is so strong that NortonLifeLock’s Digital Wellness Report found that 65 per cent of Gen X respondents were happily willing to compromise on sleep and food if they could be online. “The real risk lies in letting such behaviour go on unchecked,” says Dr Patil. Help is at hand, provided you are willing to take it.

HOW TO DETOX DIGITALLY

In response to the growing concern over digital overuse, several digital deaddiction centres have come up in India in the past year or so. In December 2021, Tamil Nadu became the first state to launch internet deaddiction centres at all government medical colleges and hospitals. The Kerala government followed suit by announcing plans for digital deaddiction centres for children in the state. Last October, the Kozhikode District Legal Services Society, in association with the district health department, started E-Mochan, a clinic that helps identify IA for early diagnosis and effective treatment. Several private centres, such as the Sakra World Hospital in Bengaluru, Arya Hospital in Chandigarh, Anandvan Addiction Liberation and Rehabilitation Centre in Pune and the Alpha Healing Centre in Vadodara, Gujarat, have all launched programmes for gaming, digital or internet addicts.

Meanwhile, the behaviour clinics at AIIMS and NIMHANS have reported a rise in the number of patients seeking treatment for digital addiction in the past two years. “It is important to recognise and seek counselling at the earliest,” says Dr Sharma. “Often people are confused and in denial since the use of digital devices is normal today. But if you feel you cannot be without a device, or you feel anger, stress or depression while using the internet, it is time to get guidance from an expert.”

In the case of 19-year-old Ishan Saxena (name changed), a gaming addiction had manifested into violent behaviour towards his parents. “We allowed him to take a gap year between school and college because of the pandemic,” says his Gurugram-based businessman father. “He used to spend time playing World of Warcraft. Before we knew it, he was playing 15 hours a day.” Trouble started when Ishan’s younger brother, aged four, also began to learn the game from him. “We separated the siblings. That is when my older son began to throw

objects at us. He would bottle up all his frustrations inside and let them all out in the games. Sometimes that violence would turn towards us too.”

Ishan’s current therapy at the AIIMS clinic focuses on behavioural tricks that allow him to speak his mind rather than suppress his emotions. For instance, when he is not allowed to speak to friends on the phone at night, his therapist now encourages him to communicate his anger and frustration instead of expending it in violent digital games. The Saxenas now observe a ‘device-free’ lunch on Sunday, when all four family members sit together at the dining table and eat, giving their two children a chance to engage in and appreciate an offline conversation.

Dr Sharma, who has helped many patients overcome their digital addiction, says such ‘digital fasts’ are a very effective first step toward going offline. He advises one to “start small”, say, a few hours every week when one mandatorily observes digital abstinence, and gradually increase the number of hours.

Force, most therapists agree, is the worst way to tackle addiction. “Confiscating your child’s phone or judging or nagging them does not help. It only makes them defensive and unwilling to find solutions,” says Dr Patel. A young patient at the SHUT Clinic specifically asked his counsellor initially to ask his parents to find balance in the use of technology—not using the phone at all was not a viable solution. For weeks, the teenager had not been able to speak to his friends as school was closed and they lived far away. The social isolation made him all the more depressed and desperate to find ways to go online. “Phones are not bad by themselves. It is all about a healthy, balanced usage pattern,” says Dr Chaddha.

In the absence of a device, many find it difficult to communicate with friends and family. When her parents enforced a ‘no phones at night’ policy because her eightyear-old brother was getting hooked to gaming, 17-year-old Shubha Nanda did not know what to do. Taking a gap year between school and college to figure out what to study further, night was when Shubha would speak to her friends on Whatsapp. So severe was the impact of the restriction that Shubha began to develop social anxiety and severe FOMO. Finally, she had to undergo therapy to discover JOMO or the joy of missing out. “I now realise that not speaking to friends every day is perfectly okay,” she says. “Moreover, I make efforts to meet them outside, so I don’t feel isolated.”

FOMO, many psychologists believe, has indeed become the greatest challenge to deaddiction. Deleting various apps, keeping a journal, finding new hobbies and offline social circles, and having a support system for encouragement and motivation are some ways to drive it away. Health counselling, behaviour and mindfulness therapy are other ways to help individuals strike a balance in internet usage.

“WITH DIGITAL MEDIA ASKING THEM NO QUESTIONS, ONLY GIVING ANSWERS, CHILDREN THESE DAYS DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO SPEAK OR COMMUNICATE OFFLINE” DR PANKAJ Paediatrist, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi

Upon arrival at a digital rehab, doctors say they spend the first few sessions simply getting to know the person and the nature of their addiction. In extreme cases, this can take up to weeks. “There is no one size fits all solution,” says Dr Sharma. “What draws a person online differs vastly—some do it to combat loneliness, others to become popular, yet others to escape the offline world.” Once the cause for addiction is identified, therapists help patients find ways to combat the urge that drives them to constantly check their devices. Support from family and friends is crucial at this stage. “Finding offline hobbies has been proven to help many patients,” adds Dr Sharma.

Guidance from a professional counsellor is a must. “Going to a therapist does not mean you are weak or mentally unsound,” says Dr Tilwe. “Sometimes people need help to understand and modify their behaviour.” In Amrita’s case, since she was forcing herself to do more work simply to generate content to post online, her therapy had to focus on helping her find validation and approval from within.

Some counsellors have even tied up with digital experts to help patients delete their digital footprint and reduce enticing notifications. “I had a patient who wanted to remove all posts she had put up when she was going through a bad divorce,” says Chennai-based counsellor Dr Ashok Bhaskar. “So we worked with a social media expert to help her understand how much of her online life was going to stay stored permanently as digital data, and how much she could realistically delete. It helped her become more cautious about what she was putting out in cyberspace.”

Going offline, therefore, is not just a question of willpower but also of being technologically savvy. “Turn off your notifications for some hours daily, put your phone on silent, change your privacy settings...these are some technical suggestions that can help reduce the presence of digital devices in daily lives,” says Mumbaibased counsellor Dr Hirak Patel.

Self-regulation is another option. “Two days a week, my two children and I do not use phones at all,” says 41-year-old Kanika Kalra, a Bengaluru-based homemaker. “I am helping them to see the world outside of their screen.”

Indeed, educating both parents and children on the healthy use of devices is more important today than ever before. “Kids also learn behaviour from their parents and family members,” says George. “For healthy digital use, everyone needs to participate and practise balanced usage.”

Many parents are coming up with ways in which digital use can be monitored and optimised (see Breaking the Shackles). “Families now face the challenge of how to effectively monitor their child’s behaviour, interactions and time spent on various online spaces. Many are using technology to counter the use of technology,” says Zaidi. This includes apps such as Netnanny and Kaspersky to help parents keep tabs on what their children are watching online. “One of the best measures can be spending quality time with children so that they get distracted from their devices,” adds Zaidi. Some children themselves have begun implementing the 20-20-20 rule where every 20 minutes, they take a 20 second break and look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. “The pandemic has made me realise how much more I use my phone and laptop,” says nine-year-old Delhi student Shekhar Sahu. “In school they have taught us the 20-20-20 rule and I now follow it because I care about my health.”

Experts say that even if there is no addictive behaviour in the house, parents can eliminate any chance of future addiction by implementing ground rules from the start. Dr Bhattacharya says, “While giving your child a mobile phone, you should explain its advantages and disadvantages in detail. You should also ensure that everyone in the house follows digital rules.” Having rules is what has helped Kalra and her two children rediscover the joys of the offline playground, offline games and offline meetings. “2019 onwards, we had forgotten what it was like to touch mud, walk on dry leaves, feel a gust of wind. Now that we use our screens less, we find ourselves looking forward to the outdoors and offline connections,” she says. As the digital world becomes more alluring through artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, the health of individuals and society will lie more and more in the balance. It is up to us to save our souls. ■

—with Shelly Anand, Daya Shankar Shukla

and Aditi Pai

“NOW THAT MY DAUGHTER AND I USE OUR SCREENS LESS, WE FIND OURSELVES LOOKING FORWARD TO THE OUTDOORS AND OFFLINE CONNECTIONS” KANIKA KALRA Homemaker, Bengaluru