Tushar, a student of Class X, has red-rimmed eyes, shaky fingers and usually feels edgy. He spends long hours on the Internet and defends it saying that he really needs to catch up with friends and read some fan fiction which he can then discuss with his friends. Rima, who is in engineering college, begins her day with six to seven hours of online classes, followed by online gaming with friends, whatsapping and posting on Instagram. Rima feels irritated when her parents stop her from spending so much time on the Internet. Shalini, a biotechnology student, is struggling with her online classes. She is studying at a foreign university and time difference has messed up her body cycle. Now she sleeps during the day and spends hours on the Internet at night. Her back hurts and her wrist has early signs of carpal tunnel syndrome.

A pandemic of a very different nature is insidiously making its way into our lives — Internet addiction or maladaptive use of technology is taking us away from the offline world and immersing us completely in the online one. Another student, Debi, reports that she has felt a sharp decline in “enthu” to do anything, has gained eight kilos of weight and lost social skills as she hardly speaks to anybody — just chats for hours online. Maybe it is time to give some thought to how healthy your relationship with the Internet has been during Covid times.

For students like Tushar and Rima online education has meant listening to recorded lectures, resolving doubts in live sessions and then whatsapping friends to resolve further queries. So every hour of classroom instruction has been converted into two to three hours of online use. What will the long-term impact of spending 10-12 hours online be? Apart from Internet addiction, we have to worry about the impact on our typing fingers, unsupported wrists, bent necks and slouching backs. Not to mention emotional and mental health. A quick watch of the documentary Social Dilemma on Netflix shows us how social media is manipulating our lives, creating distance between family members as well as impacting our mental health negatively.

If you sheepishly answer yes to most questions in the short quiz below, it is time for introspection:

⦿ Are you spending more time online than you intended to?

⦿ Do your family and friends complain that it would be easier to tweet you rather than talk to you?

⦿ Do you feel impatient with your real-world interactions because you fear missing out on what is happening in the virtual world?

⦿ Have you been using the Internet for all things —education, socialisation, shopping and so on?

⦿ Are you taking more than three selfies a day? The American Psychiatric Association has indicated that excessive selfie-taking is a mental disorder.

What are some preventive measures we can take to avoid Internet addiction? We shall discuss that in our next column.

Shivani Manchanda has a master's degree in career counselling and child development. She has been counselling about opportunities in India and abroad since 1991. Mail your queries to telegraphyou@gmail.com with Ask Shivani in the subject line