Smartphone Addiction Affecting Parenting: The Lost Children
Contributed By - Radhika Bukka
In this age of technology it has become a cliché talking about net/game addiction of others, that is. There have been several debates on pros and cons of internet exposure among kids. To sum them all up, it depends on the vulnerability of the individual and their level of exposure.
Comparisons and therapies about how children are getting addicted to computer games, how children of today are so different from what they were during their childhood go around almost in all parental discussions. The visits to child psychologists and psychiatrists have increased many folds. Nuclear families are blamed at times, but most of the time the reason is the screen addiction. That’s the most convenient way of coming to a conclusion.
The actual point is totally missed in these kinds of discussions and conclusions. As it’s an adult’s world, most often than not the blame is put on children. But in reality, majority of the adults, parents and grand parents alike use smartphones and other gadgets much more than kids. These days some of the grand parents even tell the stories of movies and serials they watch as bed time stories to children. As per researchers, Internet Addiction Disorder ( IAD), as it is called, works against the emotional intelligence too making the adult unsympathetic. The urge to read or watch anything and everything possible, though necessary or not, increases by many folds. There are medical science reports which say that smartphone addiction has the same effect on human brain as that of substance addiction. Unfortunately, for many adults, the day starts with a smartphone and ends with it too. The time that is supposed to be used for playing with kids or teaching them something or simply spending time with them has drastically reduced. For the convenience of it, even babies are given smartphones by adults while feeding or traveling. Smartphone addiction is spoon fed like this by their own parents. Such children grow up with IAD by default.
Parents who are addicted themselves feel happy about their participation in the virtual groups, where as they slowly would be losing out on their relationship with their own children. Their attention span gets very limited, with an anxiety to go back to the gadget. Eye contact with the child reduces a lot, as while talking to the kid too, the parents eyes will be focused on the smartphone giving an impression to the kid that s/he isn’t important to the parent. The child’s sense of belonging, feeling being heard is badly affected. Sometimes, we see kids calling the parents repeatedly while the parents are deeply engrossed with their smart phones. Without the needed response and care from the parents which is very much needed in nurturing the character of a young child, the child may feel lonely and deprived. Smartphone addiction is a disastrous disease in itself, the implications and complications of which are coming out slowly.
Recently, a procession was taken out by children in Germany highlighting the problems they are facing due to the net addiction of their parents. It’s a pity that such a day has come. It’s not that there were no parents with any kind of addictions before. But this is massive. A 24/7 thing which takes away all the time. The time to be used for taking children out to parks, helping in their studies, listening to their concerns and fancies. Such parents expect children to take up more responsibilities upon themselves in their studies, in solving their little personal problems et cetera. There have been increased reports of accidents and abductions of children because of their parents’ lack of attention due to smartphones.
Children learn by looking at their parents. The next time before pointing out a finger at our children, it’s better we really introspect.