Srinagar, Oct 11: It is nine in the evening in Kashmir’s traditional kitchen-cum living room and the television is on. However, no one is watching it. The father scrolls through his phone, the mother too. The teenager is chatting, sharing reels and a younger child is glued to incessant high-energy videos that flaunt new toys, new styles, new destinations visited. Nobody speaks for hour. The only spoken words are about pressing chores – dinner, homework.
This is the new age reality in a growing number of homes in Kashmir and globally. Everyone still lives together, even sits together, but everyone is in their own world.
This World Mental Health Day, mental health experts describe a quieter strain on mental well-being. Homes where everyone is present, but not connected. Each member has a private digital world. The shared evening that was once built around sharing conversations and stories in the kitchen, have thickly thinned out.
Parents say they see it but feel stuck. Summaya Javaid, a mother in Srinagar, says she tells her children to put their phones down at dinner, but no one listens.
“How do I say it with a straight face, when the father too is tangled in never-ending conversations with people who are not there in front of him, not family even?” she says.
Many others describe a different feeling: being shut out of a world they don’t understand.
Sahir Irfan, a father who lives in Sopore says his son’s gaming headset has become “a closed door”.
“He is in the next room, sometimes in the same room too but I can’t reach him,” he says.
Mental health professionals have been recording this pattern in their clinics for quite some time now.
According to Dr Arshid Hussain, head Department of Psychiatry, GMC Srinagar, the pattern of consumption of digital content and the family dynamics it is creating will decide how human beings would shape their existence in future. “There was a time when television arrived and it changed so many aspects of our lives – soaps, advertisements, consumerism, new-age reality shows and more,” he said.
Dr Arshid said now social media is casting humans and their lives into new molds.
“It is happening, and it will have its impact, good and bad,” he said.
Many mental health experts said adolescents are now arriving with sleep problems, irritability, and falling grades.
“Screen use often comes up in the first conversation only,” Dr Arshid said.
Parents often resort to drastic, unrealistic “fix”.
They snatch the devices from kids, and then they feel the kid is having “withdrawal”.
“It is real, the withdrawal. The solution to screen addiction is not linear, not sudden and definitely not one-sided,” Dr Arshid said.
Research on social media and adolescent well-being reveals many layers – some have shown that screens are as often a symptom of loneliness. A child who is already lonely or anxious goes to the phone. It is the easiest place to feel something.
Seen that way, the device is where an unmet need shows up. Kashmir’s circumstances have a unique impact: lack of activity, lack of play avenues and lack of a social life pushes families indoors.
For young people the internet has become both lifeline and refuge.
Moreover, the past few years changed the dynamics of social life.
“When going out was uncertain, the phone became the connection to the world,” a 17 year old Meezan told this reporter. Now, the one who is not online, is cut-off, he said. “The digital avatar is an expression and extension of me.”
The change has also reached the oldest members of the household – the grandparents.
Traditionally the storytellers and keepers of family time, they are increasingly becoming consumers of digital world now.
However, many are frequently left outside the digital circle.
They watch children and grandchildren sit beside them yet are absorbed elsewhere.
Counsellors suggest small, realistic steps rather than bans. No devices at meal times.
No phones in bedrooms at night and parents to curb their own screen time.
Talk to teenagers about what they do online, and in case they suspect some ‘unacceptable activity’ seek professional help.
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