Internet overdose harmful for child’s mental health--survey

Is your child spending more time on internet than sharing quality time with you? Get a reality check, as internet addiction might turn your child into a loner, results of a survey warn.

The basic purpose of the survey, conducted by Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), was to ascertain the extent of internet overuse, especially by children between eight to 18 years.

Excessive internet surfing leads to negative outcomes like social aloofness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and obesity thus affecting mental health of an individual, researchers found.

Details of the study

The chamber surveyed 1,500 internet users, both boys and girls, in 10 major cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, and Bangalore.

Interestingly, the study found boys to be more habituated of internet browsing compared to girls of same age group.

“A large number of children and adolescents have access to Internet and are getting exposed to the online world at a very early age,” Assocham secretary-general D. S Rawat said in a statement.

In fact, children of working parents were found to be more addicted to internet in the absence of parental supervision as compared to those whose single parents were employed.

"Easy availability of internet coupled with lack of parental supervision is a significant reason for this ever-increasing menace of Internet addiction."

“This trend is emerging mostly in metros where normally both the parents are employed,” the survey report said.

Survey findings

The findings of the survey revealed that excessive usage of internet has a strong impact on the fast growing, tender minds of children.

Of the total respondents surveyed, 52 percent of them said that they accessed internet for over five hours each day, 25 percent of them told they surfed the web for less than five hours daily, and the remaining said they did not access it everyday.

Researchers suggested that teenagers (in the age group of 12-18 years) were the ones most vulnerable to these risks due to over usage of internet.

"With the availability of broadband facility at cheap rates, internet is easily accessible in homes, schools, colleges, libraries, and internet cafes," the researchers noted.

“Also, the introduction of 3G services has further increased the accessibility of Internet through mobile phones,” it said.

"The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health," Rawat added.

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