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Unhealthy Influencers ? Social Media and youth mental health
India
healthysoch
New Delhi, October 17, 2024:
The rise in mental health disorders in young people is extremely concerning, and we certainly need to better understand the role that digital media and smartphones might have. Heated debate about at what age young people should be allowed smartphones, whether mobile phones should be banned in schools.
Rates of mental illness and self-harm in people aged 10–24 years have also increased. Browsing, teenagers will see advertisements for alcohol, fast foods, vaping, and gambling, and with greater exposure comes increased opportunity for the platforms to monetise. Children are expected to become independent adults capable of managing a new set of identities and responsibilities.
36% of teenagers reported continuous online contact with others. 11% of adolescents report pathological use and addiction-like symptoms: 11% have withdrawal symptoms of anxiety and low mood when not able to use social media. Severe decrease in other activities with negative consequences on their usual daily life.
According toProf(Dr) G C Khilnani, Digitalization have added invaluable comforts in our lives where almost every work can be done with a mobile phone ;be it banking, paying bills , communication with near and dears all over the world. We all use it to our comfort and so this post is also coming to you with social media. However, for the young children and teenagers it is becoming a mental and physical disease. As per surgeon General of USA report 95% of teenagers aged 13-17 years are using social medial almost constantly.
This is leading to zero physical activity and exercise, binge eating, obesity, depression and severe anxiety leading to mental illnesses. The discipline of prayers and physical activity in school is also decreasing . Personal interaction is reducing to the extent that we often seeyou see a group of youngsters sharing a lunch at a posh restaurant and all of them constantly looking at their mobile, obviously without conversing with each other. I have also seen couples enjoying dinner in a restaurant handing a mobile to three year old kid for him to get busy watching a video. Recently I was in London and saw three school children walking to school and all three constantly using their smart phone.
Besides, there is uncensored information available on social media which is detrimental to young mind polluting his thought process. Also it leads to high incidence of vaping, smoking, alcohol and other substance abuse due to advertisements on this platforms With this trend, addiction to this menace is becoming a `disease’ and there are `clinics’ for deaddiction to social media .
Another concern for using social media is impact on sleep. A peaceful sleep for more than 7 hours for an adult is essential for short term and long term physical and mental health. Sleep deprivation leads to lack of concentration, over eating, excess use of coffee/tea and smoking. More importantly there is higher incidence of Hypertension, Diabetes, heart disease, strokes, cancers and dementia attributable to sleep deprivation. Use of social media leads to severe sleep fragmentation and deprivation as the person wants to be `connected’ all the time.
It takes year to generate scientific evidence of such habits on causation of diseases. This article published today in one of the most prominent Medical Journal `THE LANCET’ is a `WAKE UP CALL’ to understand the abuse of social media by our young minds. While mobile phones and laptops are essential part of out daily lives its use must be judicious and some regulation/discipline should be there so that the young children have normal physical, mental and social development
*Prof(Dr) G C Khilnani is the Chairman, PSRI Institute of Pulmonary, Critical care and Sleep Medicine Formerly: Professor and Head of Pulmonary, Critical care and Sleep Medicine AIIMS, New Delhi
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