Of saving our childrenfrom the monstercalled mobile phone

 

 

 

 

“We should save our children from the mobile monster. If we fail to do this, we may be leaving our little ones on a road to sure disaster”. EVEN as she said this, the voice of the Principal of a well-known school cracked in exasperation. “I have seen the actual ill-effects of mobile-addiction on my students for years. I have enlisted my teachers’ support in a silent campaign against mobile-addiction. I am happy to state that our campaign is bearing good results”, she added. The loud-thinker understood the Principal’s trauma instantaneously since he also has been engaged in similar efforts against mobile- addiction. And, fortunately for us, this has no longer remained a concern restricted only to a few. More and more people at all levels of the society are beginning to realise that if allowed to go unchecked, mobile-addiction would prove to be a killer monster for our kids -- in the sense it would affect our youngsters in body and mind if they are not extricated from the mental mess the mobile-addiction brings. Psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, educators, parents, elders in the family and society are beginning to sense the terrible danger hidden in mobile-addiction.

 

However, it must be said candidly that the level of social awakening against mobile-addiction is still quite low in our society, and more work needs to be done in that regard -- so as to save our youngsters from its ill-effects that affect not just the mind but also the body. Children addicted to mobile phones are known to have begun suffering from bent backbones, a palpable loss of hearing, a clear decline in eye-sight, lack of sleep, decline in the ability to remember what they have learnt or studied. And equally importantly, such kids are known to become social-recluses. They lose their conversational ability and basic communicative skills. These are no mean losses, so to say. For, persons afflicted with all these or any of these ill-effects would be problem-persons in whatever they would undertake in their later lives. Their careers and their lives could be affected negatively, thanks to mobile-addiction.

 

This realisation has brought many families to make concerted efforts to wean their young ones away from the gadget. But unless such efforts are institutionalised in schools, colleges as well as in homes, no concrete results would be available to us. There is no denying the fact that mobile phone is a very addictive gadget -- which can ensnare even the adults. The evidence of this sad reality also is available to us everywhere -- in most homes where elders are so fully engrossed in their respective mobile phones that there is no sensible communication or conversation in families in ever-increasing numbers. Even at the dinner tables, people sit staring at their mobile gadgets as they eat their meals in a half-hearted manner. Is this not a very serious loss to our family institution? Unfortunately, the awareness about the dangers of mobile-addiction are getting to be recognised by the larger society in a slow-motion manner. And by any standard, that is very painful to those who think rationally from every possible angle.