Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Debashis Chatterjee Ravi Shankar S Vaidhyasubramaniam Luke Coutinho Mata Amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI april 26 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 A Digital Disaster The obsession of children in India with digital devices is fuelling an epidemic—anxiety, fractured attention, and underdeveloped thinking. The good news: it’s not too late to reset T By Suruchi Kapur Gomes here is a cave in the Ardeche gorge—Chauvet—of southern France that most people will never see. The French government has kept it sealed since its discovery in 1994, admitting only a handful of researchers per year, concerned that human breath alone could destroy what is inside. The cave walls are covered in paintings of lions, rhinoceroses, horses, and aurochs, showing a sureness of line and a sensitivity to light and shadow that would not look out of place in a contemporary exhibition in MOMA. The artists who made them lived approximately 36,000 years ago. They had, in every measurable sense, the same brain you are using to read these words. But the difference is that they did not have tablets and cell phones to hinder growth or change, which would have seriously affected the subsequent generations. This year, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka began drafting some of the most aggressive digital-age child protection measures in the country Andhra Pradesh has proposed a ban on . social media use for children under 13, alongside stricter, graded access for teenagers. The plan has exposure limits for users aged 13-16. Karnataka, meanwhile, has proposed restrictions for users under 16 and even an AI-focused regulatory framework to monitor harmful content and deepfakes. Madhu Bangarappa, Minister of Primary & Secondary Education and Sakala of Karnataka, says, “Children are born as Vishwa Manava—open, expansive, and inherently capable of becoming their best selves—but as they grow, unchecked influences can narrow that potential. Today social media, while , informative in parts, often distorts, misleads, and fosters negativity especially among , impressionable minds.” Prolonged use of digital media leads to lower attention spans and more impulsiveness. This decreases the child’s mind’s ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts or multiple concepts simultaneously Results in sedentary behaviour leading to obesity Blue light from phone and computer Gaming is taking over kids’ time and focus screens throws sleep cycles into disarray affecting REM sleep Minimal face-to-face human interaction encourages social isolation and anxiety Younger children get addicted to digital use thanks to a “reward system” similar to gambling Dr Sanjiv Nichani, OBE, founder, Healing Little Hearts Global Foundation, senior paediatrician, Leicester Children’s Hospital, says, “After four decades in paediatrics, I have witnessed a profound and alarming shift—the rise of what I call the ‘Screendemic’: a public health crisis driven by excessive smartphone and social media use, where children are growing up in technology-controlled environments, facing escalating mental health disorders, attention fragmentation, and developmental delays.” India’s Chief Economic Advisor has openly called for agebased limits on social media to counter addiction and cognitive harm among children. According to Dr Prof. Vishal US Rao, dean and professor, HCG, and member of the Consultative Group to Principal Scientific Advisor to PM, Government of India, “A blanket social media ban for under-16s is unlikely to work; instead, we need evidence-based regulation—chronological feeds, limits on addictive design, no targeted ads for minors, digital literacy education, and routine screen-time audits—so we reduce harm while building resilience and protecting sleep and mental health.” The brain, especially the developing brain is now exposed to forces evolution never prepared it for. The ancient mind struggled with distraction, while the modern mind is engineered for it. And yet, even as governments attempt to regulate the external world, the internal question remains unresolved. What happens when thinking itself becomes optional? The brain, once the final frontier of privacy and identity , is becoming something else: an interface, a node in a larger system of intelligence that extends beyond the individual, especially Turn to page 2
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