- 1 day ago
At the India Today Education Conclave 2026, Amit Sen warned that excessive screen use is worsening children’s mental health.
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00:00Good afternoon all. Thank you very much for having me here, Mr. Raj Chengappa, Charu ma'am and team India Today.
00:10As was said, I'm a child psychiatrist by profession and I feel a little intimidated in this hall full of educators and having to talk about education in students.
00:24Can you hear me? Is that better? All right, all right. So, I mean clearly in today's day the digital world, the screen, plays a very central role in not just the education but in the lives of not just children but all of us.
00:48And since I come from the mental health background, I'm presuming that the organizers at least felt that it's important to bring that in, in the equation of education in this context.
01:02And therefore, what I've brought to you is really a collection of our experience and our understanding of what's been happening in the mental health space.
01:13And how could that relate to education? What kind of impact can it have?
01:18So, given my background, I'm going to start my presentation with the slide. This is about neurodevelopment. This is about, these are functional scans of the brain of children from the age of 5 to 20.
01:35Yeah? The brain doesn't grow after 5, not in volume, but it definitely grows in complexity.
01:42And in this picture, as you can see, that the figures on the left-hand side, which is when children are between, let's say, 5 to 8, there are a lot of red and yellow patches.
01:53Those are the immature parts of the brain. And as children grow up, as young people grow up, the brain becomes very complex, new circuits develop, they become firmer.
02:06And that happens through a wide range of learning, every domain of development.
02:12While some of that is driven genetically, biologically, but the environment, whether it is social, educational, relational, and right now digital, has a huge impact.
02:26And, as you can see, that, you know, the pictures from being, you know, bright, red, orange, yellow, have, you know, become blue and indigo.
02:37And those are the parts that have really firmed up and matured, right?
02:40The good part is that even at 20, all of it is not mature. That gives us hope that even after leaving school, children and young people will continue to grow and develop.
02:49But the thing to remember is that what children, young people experience in their lives, in the world outside, is what actually creates those circuits.
03:01Yeah. And after that, if we take the mental health lens, so to say, and think about what our environment is like.
03:14So I'm sure that all of you would have read about or seen on TV and perhaps even discussed this huge tragedy that took place in Ghaziabad last week where three sisters ended their lives.
03:29And the kind of news that was coming up, both in the visual and the written media, left some of us really a little vexed and wanting because it took very unilateral, very limited view of what had perhaps gone on.
03:52I mean, a lot of that was conjecture, but to think that these three girls, the only reason why they took this extreme step was the Korean game or some TV show that we're watching was really reductionist.
04:06And when news started unfolding and we got to know about the structure of the family, the kind of stresses they might have gone through, financial, perhaps the parenting, perhaps being three girls in a family in this patriarchal society, so many things would have influenced them to or drive them towards a kind of space that was virtual, but in some ways fulfilling to them, isn't it?
04:32So it's important, therefore, to ask a few questions, like does screen affect all children the same way, you know?
04:39Perhaps not, isn't it?
04:40Or does it impact growth and development?
04:43And most certainly, and we need to understand that in a layered way, and therefore does it impact mental health?
04:49And if it does, indeed if it does, then does that impact education in turn?
04:54Because now I think increasingly we know that mental and emotional well-being and health is central to any kind of learning, isn't it?
05:01So how does it impact it, right?
05:03And finally, the last question is, is digital addiction real?
05:07Any show of hands?
05:09Is it real?
05:10All of you agree that it's real, isn't it?
05:13Yes.
05:14So, although, you know, there is no diagnostic label that is still appeared in the classificatory systems, there is widespread acknowledgement that indeed there are all kinds of behaviors and changes that we see, right?
05:30Or manifestations in behaviors and brain scans and other kinds of testing and the way it impacts, you know, growth development and education.
05:40All of that is indeed bodysome.
05:43And if you look at some of the research that has come up, even before COVID, COVID, of course, has had a deep, deep impact on some of these things because our life has changed after that, particularly children's lives.
05:55And I'm sure, as educators and other stakeholders, you know that very well, right?
06:00But even before COVID, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics, ARP in short, had done widespread studies.
06:08And they figured that the majority of children, even between the ages of eight to 10 years, were doing more than eight hours of screening.
06:16And if they were above the age of, you know, 12, 13, then they were doing 11 hours per day, right?
06:23And that is actually more than any other activity.
06:26That is the second most or the second amount of time that they spent after sleep.
06:32So, and of course, a lot of these studies have happened in different countries.
06:36Even in India, after COVID, there was one clinic-based studies which said that 28.1% of the students that came to the clinic were addicted to some kind of digital platform.
06:49There have been other studies also, and now more recently from other countries like UK, Japan, South Korea, and more recently in China, where they have figured that even from a structural, functional point of view, there are changes in the brain.
07:05There are changes in the neurochemistry.
07:06I'm not going to go into the details of that, but the scary bit is that the kind of changes that you see in the brain in children who are so-called addicted to screens are very similar or exactly, in fact, exactly the same.
07:19The same pathways are implicated even in drug dependence.
07:24And that's the most scary bit, right?
07:27So it's the same kind of reward systems, you know, which includes the amygdala and the dopamine and all of that.
07:33You might have heard from even young people talking about what gives them a dopamine kick.
07:38And that's what we see that, you know, is, and when we actually do systematic studies through functional brain imaging, we see that these changes are indeed true, right?
07:51And on a functional level, when you do cognitive testing, you find that they have short attention spans, their language is poorly developed, they have difficulties managing and organizing their time, they have poor impulse control, frustration tolerance.
08:06Socially, they're not just as developed.
08:08I'm talking about the kids who do hours and hours of screen at the expense of other things, right?
08:13So those are the kind of things that we see developmentally.
08:16And of course, there are mental health consequences as well.
08:21So if you really want to know as educators as to what are the kind of markers that you see, there are some of these things, again, which you typically see in drug abuse and addiction as well.
08:33For instance, the activity predominates the young person's mind and day.
08:39They're constantly thinking, when would they come back from school, when will they open their laptop, you know, when are they going to get in, start playing their, you know, multiplayer game?
08:50When are they going to sneak out their mobile phone from their parents, you know, pillow or room to be able to play when they're asleep?
08:59All of those kinds of things predominate their minds.
09:02And of course, there are modifications in mood behaviors.
09:05It's very, very hard for young people who have got addicted to give up their gadgets.
09:11And usually it meets with a lot of resistance, a lot of tempers, emotional outbursts, sometimes very extreme, you know, leading to violence and even self-harm.
09:22And that's what we see in this very tragic incident.
09:25There are many more such incidences and scenarios that we see in families and children who come to us.
09:33And of course, you know, some of the older ones realize what it's doing to them and they repeatedly try to give it up.
09:40But that's often a losing battle.
09:42You know, they'll come off it for some time and sooner or later they're back into that same cycle of chasing this.
09:50And that's really damning and demoralizing for these people as well.
09:56And then, of course, ultimately, there's school refusal.
09:58And as I said, a wide range of mental health complications.
10:01So that's the kind of scenario that you have when you have digital addiction.
10:10The point of it all, and I want to emphasize this, is that it's never a linear relationship.
10:17It's not a cause and effect relationship.
10:19It's not as if that when children start doing a lot of screen, they immediately start having cognitive difficulties.
10:25They grow and develop in a different trajectory or start having mental health problems or start, you know.
10:31These things are actually associated and they are cyclical.
10:35They coexist.
10:36And many times we have figured that there are susceptibilities.
10:41There are vulnerable children who tend to gravitate towards these kind of behaviors much more than others.
10:46And it's important that as a group, as educators, as mental health professionals, we understand it.
10:53Because if you do not, then when these kind of tragedies or extremes of things happen, we tend to blame one party or the other.
11:01We say that, you know, if we ban media, everything will become better.
11:05Some people say that it's a parenting which is the problem, you know.
11:08Or our education system is really broken.
11:11And if we don't set it right, nothing will happen.
11:13Actually, it's a combination of things.
11:15And we get to know that because there are many things that contribute to this.
11:20Of course, one thing is adolescence.
11:21And we know that in adolescence, you know, there is a need to explore the world.
11:28There is a need for excitement.
11:30There is a need for this dopamine kick that I was talking about, which is the highest.
11:34Right.
11:35So and that starts from the age of 10 and it sort of keeps rising.
11:38And then it's only till the time a young person is 25 or beyond that they can kind of, you know, so to speak, rest a little from this drive from within the within the brain, within our own bodies.
11:53And that reward pathway makes them vulnerable.
11:57And similar to that, kids with neurodivergence like ADHD, learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder tend to gravitate towards it for perhaps more than one reason.
12:08They really like the stimulation that they get from digital media, but they also have a space to go to when nothing else is working in their lives, you see.
12:18So and similar to that, there's depression, anxiety, self-arm, body image disturbances, different kinds of trauma.
12:25And of course, you know, environmental, other environmental influences like family and parental conflicts, remote parenting and all of that.
12:33And finally, not to miss that there's a multi-billion dollar industry that's at work and they don't care about children's safety.
12:40You know, their their main aim is to actually make their apps and their devices as enticing, as addictive, you know, and indeed there is again a bunch of studies which tell you that how the apps are designed in a manner that the anxiety hooks the kids.
12:57So it actually generates anxiety in them. Right. So what can we do? I mean, so.
13:04OK, so before we go on to that, there is a flip side to it, I'm sure. So, you know, my role as a psychiatrist is to look at things that go where kids are struggling with, because that's what we see day in and day out.
13:16That's how they come to us. But I'm sure there's a lot of positives as well. And when we look at the flip side, even from mental health development point of view, there are many things that are I'm sure I don't need to tell you.
13:26There's so much of excitement, entertainment and perhaps connections. Even there's a question mark.
13:31A lot of people think that we have most the most disconnected, you know, society today, despite being digitally connected.
13:38So and of course, this gives an escape for kids who are emotionally struggling, who are developmentally different as an escape from the harsh realities of the world.
13:48So temporarily, at least, they can protect themselves from that world outside. And and it does that till the time, of course, things go out of control.
13:57There is curiosity, research, exploration. Choices have expanded through this. There's no question about that.
14:03But in a strange way, they have also got more limited, because once children take to the digital world, it also dictates terms to them.
14:14They have to fit in. And the moment you do that, then you are you do not have the other options of being who you who you can be.
14:21Children, especially teenagers, they require what is called downtime to be able to assimilate the experiences they have have in the world.
14:29Today, all kids will, you know, clutch on to their mobile phones or their laptop or their iPad for the whole day.
14:38The first thing they'll reach out to when they wake up is that when they go to the their washrooms and bathroom, they'll take it with them.
14:44There is no break from anything at all. The social world follows them everywhere.
14:48You know, the likes, the emojis, the body image issues, etc. They're constantly chasing them.
14:54There is no option from there. So in that sense, the ability to actually step out of that and make your own, you know, judgment, your own choices actually becomes more limited.
15:04So it's a strange kind of paradox, honestly. So who can help? What can we do with this?
15:11Of course, tech companies should be made accountable. And I think that usually the position they take is that we as companies have the freedom or should have the freedom to express what we want.
15:23I mean, this is something that we are doing for entertainment, for knowledge, for education. And the rest is up to the rest of the community.
15:30It's up to the parents. It's up to school. You handle it. But that's not fair at all, because what they do, the damage they do by, you know, very, very methodically manipulating the space.
15:42And like I said, enticing young people to come in and engage with this itself is dangerous. And that's where the state and the policy can help. And so can the lawmakers.
15:51So it has to be a collaborative approach where people come in and say, this is not okay. This is where, you know, the kind of step that a country like Australia has taken that, you know, no social media up to the age of 16 is something that needs to be watched very carefully.
16:05How do they even implement something like that? I'm very curious about it. I don't know if it can ever happen in a country like ours, which is so diverse, where, you know, political will and policy and, you know, action, as Professor Dinesh Singh was saying, is often, you know, wide apart.
16:26And how do we do that? I mean, people like mental health professionals step in when the crises happen. Schools, I believe, have an extremely central role in influencing the space.
16:40And we could talk about that a little and they could include, no doubt, parents in the community. And that's a big thing. And I think I know of schools who are represented here.
16:51I mean, senior educators who have done this work of coming together as communities with parents and then, you know, having their own rules, policies and ways of dealing with some of these crisis and students.
17:04And just like Professor Singh was saying that we have to begin to trust our children, we have to take them more seriously, we have to take feedback from them to be able to begin to make any changes.
17:18I mean, if I ask this room that, you know, with so many senior people who are curious and I'm sure motivated to make some changes in all these spaces, who knows more about the digital space?
17:30All of you put together or the kids that you work with? It's the kids, isn't it? It's by far, I mean, it's almost in their DNA from the time they're born almost, you know, from the time they're toddlers, they've been handling it.
17:42In those pictures that I showed you about, you know, how the circuits developed, those gadgets and the functioning of it has got embedded.
17:50You know, it's a second nature almost. So if we try to implement it from top down, it's not going to work.
17:56They'll find a way around it, isn't it? And that's what happens. Many times, whether it's school or parents, if you make rules, you try to implement them and you make rules from your own anxiety, you know, or our skewed understanding of some of these things.
18:09For instance, you know, in many, many times that we hear parents or even teachers talk about how their child or the children are addicted to gadgets and they do four hours in a day.
18:21But if you ask them how many hours you do, they'll probably do six or eight. Right. So they're not addicted, but the kids are.
18:26So you can't begin to have, you know, sort of different values and different ways of dealing with this from a top down approach.
18:34And that's why what we firmly believe and we see is working is a collaborative approach.
18:42It has to be that we don't see it in isolation. We come together as different stakeholders.
18:48But importantly, very importantly, we have you must have children participating in it, you know, young, old, perhaps slightly older ones, perhaps the ones who have already been through a crisis themselves, have gone through, you know, their own experiences to come back and relate what they have been through and then share it with their peers, their juniors and pull that knowledge together.
19:12And making it a part of the curriculum. I'm sure many of you are thinking about it. Break down screen time.
19:17So, you know, screen time becomes anything that is on the screen becomes problematic. It raises adult anxiety.
19:22But actually think of it screens are used for learning, for, you know, social engagement, for entertainment and for scrolling.
19:28So how do you if you were able to categorize that, you know, and at home and school, then it becomes easier to handle.
19:35And and it's easier than to kind of have some some commonality in the themes that we discussed.
19:43And the other thing that we often talk about is, you know, how to stop and reduce screen time, oftentimes in their frustration, anger or anxiety patterns take away the screens as it happened in the recent case.
19:56But what instead, we often ask, because in our world, those spaces have shrunk, the spaces that many of us used to enjoy just going out and just being getting bored, finding creative ways with our friends, with with twigs and maybe just one ball with, you know, rainwater, growing tadpoles in a bucket.
20:20There's so many different things we would do, too. And of course, some of the other things that children, which adults often bitterly complain about lack of exercise, lack of doing anything creative and all that, we have to open up those spaces.
20:36It requires intention, it requires commitment, and it requires resources from adults and from the systems around. And that's what we have to think about.
20:47Explore neurodivergence and mental health conditions if things are going out of hand, parenting and boundaries for all, not just for kids, but for parents as well.
20:54Educational pathways based on strengths and interests, again, as has been mentioned in the previous session, and realistic, doable, collaborative goals, one step at a time.
21:04Because if we stretch the, you know, the limits, and if we set the boundaries too high, we are bound to fail. It's a complex thing.
21:11It's a complex thing. We are in a position where we are making a journey, where we are learning as we go, and have to have the humility to say, I don't know, and we'll figure it out together.
21:23And we'll take small steps at a time, and take steps and plan it in a way where we succeed.
21:30At the end of the day, we feel together that there's something that we've achieved out of it.
21:34Until the time we are able to do that, it's going to be a repeated loop of trying our hardest, and all of us saying that, oh my God, what do we do about this?
21:41Because I've done my job, and I've done to the best of my ability, but it hasn't come together.
21:46So yeah, happy balancing. Thank you.
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