Addicted to reels, student breaks hand to skip exams
in Ahmedabad was so hooked on short video formats that she spent an average of 12 hours relishing them. With practically all her waking hours consumed by this addiction, she voluntarily fractured her right hand to avoid writing her nursing exams!
The violent self-harm was a rude wake-up call for the nursing student, who herself called the Tele MANAS (14416)
helpline, a central govt project, to report herself and seek help.
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The details of her reel addiction even shocked the seasoned counsellors.
The Tele MANAS experts said that overall screen time has significantly spiked since the Covid pandemic, with the 'new normal' hovering around 5-6 hours. The nursing student had a compulsion to check her phone constantly and primarily consumed short-format videos, along with checking social media, exploring music and videos, and surfing websites.
"The aspiring nurse confessed that she started watching short videos, popularly known as reels, about six months ago when she felt lonely and bored. Soon, she could not give up watching her phone even when she visited restaurants, cafes, or movie theatres. Ahead of her exams, she felt blank and decided to fracture her hand to avoid appearing for her exams, for which she was obviously unprepared," said a Tele MANAS counsellor.
After four months of counselling, the nursing student recently wrote her term exams. "Extensive therapy helped her bring down her total screen time to three hours. Her mother was counselled about loneliness being central to her phone addiction and was advised to give her daughter more time and attention," added the counsellor.
Dr Chirag Parmar, psychiatrist and coordinator for Tele MANAS at HMH, said that the helpline has received over 16,000 calls since its inception, with
emerging as a major secondary factor in mental health issues.
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"Digital addiction is present in over 70-80% of cases related to mood swings, feeling down, anxiety, or sleep disorders. Like most addictions, it starts small with a few minutes or half an hour of scrolling. But the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and to get the same level of dopamine kick, the person needs more screen time, starting an endless loop," he said, adding that one should try to remember the first two clips they saw after one such session to realise that there is no actual brain stimulus.
Dr Ajay Chauhan, medical superintendent of Government Hospital for Mental Health (HMH), said that of the 16,000 calls, two-thirds were dialled by men. The majority, 70% of callers, were in the age group of 18 to 40 years, which is termed the working population. "Each age group has its own unique set of mental health issues, and thus we need a different approach to tackle it. It ranges from anxiety at an early age due to intense competition for professional exams such as JEE or NEET among students to feelings of loneliness among the elderly," he said.
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