BENGALURU : If your children have been spending more time than usual playing shooting games on their phones, chances are they might be part of the PUBG wave that seems to be sweeping across the city. The popular multiplayer shooting game, where 100 players square off against one another, is very popular with the younger generation, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) Bengaluru, there are increasing cases of children becoming addicted to the escape that the game and other such apps provide.
NIMHANS houses the Safe and Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic, which deals with online addiction as part of its services. Experts working at the clinic say that there are more kids being brought in for addiction to PUBG as well as ‘Dub-smash’ another app where you can record videos with a voiceover of famous film dialogues. “We see children coming in whose parents are concerned about them playing hazardous games, and not a particular game or app. Addiction to gadgets is a huge problem,” said Dr BN Gangadhar, Director of NIMHANS.
PUBG and Dub-smash might just be the latest fad, but online gaming addiction is something that SHUT has been observing for some time. Now, realising the seriousness of this addiction, many schools in the city have started issuing advisories to parents asking them to keep a closer eye on their child’s online activity. According to Mansoor Ali Khan, a board member of Delhi Public School, kids usually didn’t play such games during school hours. “Normally, they don’t play in schools, but looking at the behavioural changes in kids, we can easily judge that they are addicted to gadgets.”
As a result, the school reaches out to parents at every parent-teacher meeting and asks to them to check what their kids do online. “Many parents ignore this and realise the seriousness only when the problem reaches its peak. Not just PUBG, we are witnessing several kids addicted to Dub-smash and they spend a lot of time imitating a movie star or enacting famous movie scenes,” Khan said.
Principals of schools say that kids who form such addictions gradually lose interest in studies. They tend to want to be left alone and are not interested in extra-curricular activities. Several of them start being irregular in attendance and also start lying to their teachers.
Deeper reasons for addiction
According to experts from NIMHANS, there are three underlying reasons for increasing addiction to gadgets. “The usage of these gadgets is a quantum of an inherent disorder. These could include a learning disability, obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety disorder,” Dr Gangadhar said. Other reasons include a non-conducive home environment. “If the home environment is hostile, kids get addicted to gadgets or games as an escape,” experts said. Dr Gangadhar said the third reason is an improper school environment.
“There are things like bullying by friends, a nasty teacher and stressful environment at schools that cause such addictions,” mentioned Gangadhar. According to experts, the primary or secondary reasons needs to be attended to and the child needs to be diverted towards other alternatives which will help them shed the addiction to gadgets. To help parents with this objective, the state primary and secondary education department is in the process of finalising a ‘Cyber Policy’ for kids and parents for which department has already received suggestions from the Health and Family Welfare department and are waiting for a reply from Cyber Crime wing of police department and other cyber crime experts.
digital detox kicks off at city schools
It can be recalled that during Dasara vacations this year, some city schools launched ‘Digital Detox’ programmes where kids were given a challenge of keeping themselves away from gadgets. Some schools even made students sign an agreement with their class teacher to not use gadgets during vacations