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Young India is the digital India. Today’s youth are immersed in the digital world for almost all waking hours. There are lots of discussions going on about the benefits and dangers of digitalization in academic and non-academic fields. Gangadharan, Borle and Basu, academicians from Maulana Azad Medical College and Indian Institute of Public Health, New Delhi, conducted research in 2019 on mobile phone addiction among Indian youths. They clearly stated that “mobile phone addiction has evolved as a form of behavioural addiction found to be increasingly prevalent among adolescents too”. Although there is no doubt that mobile phone and digital media usage has significantly broadened the periphery of knowledge access and dissemination among Indian Youth, there are obvious underlying psychological and psychophysical dangers as well.
It is common to see youths walking on roads without any awareness of what is around them. They are mostly seen with headphones or earpods on or looking at a mobile screen. Careless and aloof walking style seems to be a familiar scenario even in colleges and universities, where a considerable number of students gather. Personnel of such institutions are often seen grumbling about such incidents. This often leads to small-scale social conflicts and fights, when they unknowingly push or hit someone with their luggage or otherwise. Majorly, discussions of such incidents hover around disrespect, attitude issues, poor observation skills, and lack of values among contemporary youth. We rarely discuss the psychophysical reasons behind such behavior or the pervasiveness of it. There is an imminent need to remind ourselves that such distractions and lack of circumstantial awareness are also frequent reasons for large-scale damages like road accidents and life loss.
A group of researchers from Australia and the Netherlands recently wrote about road distractions being associated with maladaptive mobile phone use, in 2022. They distinctly mentioned, “it is well established that road users (e.g., drivers, motorcyclists, pedestrians, and cyclists) increasingly injure themselves or others due to distractions such as phone use while on the road.” This trend is global but is more relevant in a developing country like India, where the socio-political scenario is striving to gain digital autonomy. Psychophysics research and general observation clearly indicate that high mobile usage and intense immersion in the digital sphere are damaging contemporary youth’s peripheral perception. Being absorbed in the two-dimensional mobile screens, they are slowly losing their peripheral vision, auditory and kinesthetic sensations and perceptions. Either they are not even lifting their heads up to see around, or even when they are looking, they are not observant of things around them.
It is high time that, instead of focusing singularly on their attitudes and values as indicative of the intention behind road distractions, we focus on the scientific psychophysical
damages that are leading to such socio-cultural non-normative behaviors. Life-skills training is necessary, at home and educational institutions, to regulate maladaptive mobile phone use among Indian Youth. A functional field-oriented practice approach is suggested for this training to achieve the desired goal.
