There was a time when the children of the children started from the lap of the parents and were reduced to the same. Mother’s fingers were the first school and father’s palm was the safest roof. But today this scene has changed. Now the newborn also has a shining screen in his hand, and instead of being in the lap of the parents, the child spends more time in the lap of the mobile. The touch that used to give emotional security earlier has now turned into a ‘screen touch’. We are in a period where parents are becoming physically presented for children. Children now learn from video and game, not from dialogue. And this change indicates not just a habit, but a serious social crisis.
This digital distance crisis is not only a matter of time, it is sitting in the root of emotional vacancy. The 2022 report of the Pew Research Center states that 69% of the parents admit that they use mobile or tablet to silence their children. According to a report by Assocham in India, an average urban children spend 3 to 4 hours of screen per day on screen, most of which is spent in loneliness or away from family. When children start sharing their stories, questions, or fear screen with ‘Angry Bird’ or ‘Baby Shark’, the dialogue with parents slowly starts to close. This distance increases so many times that when the teenage stage comes, the parents do not know in which mental world their child is living.
This relationship with children is not unilateral. Many times parents themselves are so busy in mobile that children experience neglect. When parents turn every answer to ‘a short time’ or ‘I am working now’, the child gradually assumes that the world of mobile is its true association. Many times children do mischiefs to attract attention, but when they are also ignored, they become silent inside. A 2021 report of Lancet Child and Adolescent Health says that children who seek emotional balance through digital medium from the age of 5, later they have more tendency for behavioral disconnect and emotional suppression. Loneliness in this silence can later turn into problems like lack of confidence, irritability, and depression.
Early years are the most decisive in the mental and emotional development of children. If in these years, the feeling of the face of the parents, the language of the eyes and the warmth of the vowel disappears, then the children can only get information, not true emotional connection. The immediate entertainment on mobile gives them temporary happiness, but does not understand the permanent relationship. Today’s children know a lot, but less feel. This is the reason that the lack of ’emotional intelligence’ is emerging in a new generation. When the relationship starts operating from the screen, the depth of the relationship does not become a habit. And when habits start taking place of emotions, the relationship between humanity’s most soft aspect-father and child is in the grip of artificiality.
The solution to this problem is not in completely denying the technique, but in learning its balanced use. Mobile is a device, which is used in the right direction, it can become helpful, but its superstition makes relationships crippled. Parents should not consider spending time with the child as ‘extra’, but make it an essential part of their routine. Sitting together while eating food, telling stories, listening to school, playing – all these are small but deep experiences. If a father takes 30 minutes from his mobile and play football with his child, or the mother reacts to her imaginative thing, then the same moment can become the basis of permanent belief in the child’s soul. The digital world can increase the understanding of children, but only the world of affection and security can make parents.
Finally, the question is whether the mobile has now replaced the parents? Or is that the parents themselves handed over that place to the screen? It is true that time is changing, technology has become an essential part of life, but no technology can be replaced by those relationships that become the first feelings of life. If we want a generation that is sensitive, confident and balanced, then we have to ask ourselves – we are giving time to our children or just facilities? Because the first thing children want, they are neither toys, nor tablet-tablets are the lap of parents in which they can be sure, cry, laugh and be the most supportive.
