While excessive use of technology interfered in several day-to-day activities, majority of the adolescents surveyed by the Clinical Psychology Department of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) said they faced difficulty in meeting friends (74 per cent).
However, only 61 per cent of them found it difficult to spend time with their relatives and family.
Children in the 16 to 17 age group reported more difficulties arising out of excessive use of technology than the ones in the 13 to 15 age group.
“Some of the symptoms for identifying addiction include decline in academics, sleep disturbances, waking up in the middle of the night and remaining withdrawn from family and friends,” Manoj Kumar Sharma, additional professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS.
All the students surveyed reported being members of at least one social networking website and were spending an average of 72 minutes per day on the websites. Nearly 46.5 per cent of the adolescents were addicted to Facebook. A majority of them used their Facebook account to share jokes and messages (42 per cent), while 17 per cent of them used it to share ideas and new technology.
About 32 per cent of the respondents reported to have come across sexual content while accessing social media and 20 per cent of them felt distressed about this. Nearly 80 per cent of the boys and 29 per cent the girls said they played digital games.
However, there was no significant difference in terms of psychiatric distress, mobile phone and television usage or social behaviour between male and female respondents.
The survey found that only a small percentage of those addicted to these technological tools were willing make a change.
All the respondents were spending an average of 72 minutes a day on social media sites
