The psychology of Inertia and Addiction

    The dawn of the internet era and the ushering of the age of social media brought in a chain of hopes in society to make it more inclusive. Along with it came a slew of the downside of social media. Addiction and inertia became the new norm among adolescents, youths and adults.

    Indian demography is quite young and it will not remain so forever. This demography has to be utilised and converted into dividend before the window of opportunity closes which is around 2047. In order to convert into a dividend, there must be reforms in human development in terms of income, health and education. If the government invests in these three sectors carefully in a planned manner, the benefits are sure to be accrued  in coming 10 to 15 years. With empowered citizens, India will certainly travel on a path of inclusive development towards the end of the century.

    The advent of the social media and games could prove to be a hurdle in inclusive development. Todays youth are addicted to social media and games and display an inertia to come out of addiction. Inertia and addiction are like two faces of the same coin. One cannot exist without other. Attempts of parents trying to convince their children to be present in the real world have been futile. The youth of today display no respect towards elders. While some say that respecting elders was introduced to propagate the idea of capitalism through servitude, there is more of a logical dimension to it. The elders are the experienced ones. They have traversed the path called life. During this journey they would have encountered various diverse circumstances and would have tried to sail through it. Today they would have learned from their mistakes and are still surviving.  Maybe they would not have faced the same problems but nonetheless they at-least know how to face a problematic situation. The youth have become repulsive. Their concentration has become short spanned. They lock themselves up in their rooms in their own world of social media or games. The addiction is to an extent that they don't even eat properly and tend to become malnourished even when they can afford sufficient food, while some become obese! The addiction will cause them to become lazy and slowly it will start affecting their daily activities. In the longer run, they tend to develop physical complications and psychosomatic disorders if they are untreated.

    During the lockdown, the trend of youth involved in games and social media have intensified. Parents have tried to bring sense to their children but without success. The lockdown has aggravated the inertia to the extent of modifying the sleep wake cycle. No timings are maintained. The body's circadian rhythm is disturbed and all the biological clocks have gone hay wire. There is a probability that this trend might continue further deepening the disorder making the youths socio maniac and game maniacs.

    We have heard of youths becoming violent for stopping them from using social media or playing games. The brain is a very powerful weapon. A single thought can influence our behaviour. But unfortunately, brain has a certain inertia. This inertia of the brain wants the person to remain the same and unchanging. The inertia makes the body and the mind comfortable not necessitating a change. Any attempt of change from external world through parents or peer groups is seen as dangerous and evokes an emotional response. This emotional response usually tends towards anger. The anger creates a more intense desire of inertia, not to change. This extreme attachment blocks the thinking and cognitive ability of the person. The blockage creates confusion in the mind rendering the person forgetting the original purpose of his anger. At this point, the person can take extreme steps because of lack of judgement and become anti social. 

    Inclusive development becomes a myth if the youth of today do not realise that they are in an endless cycle of their own comfort zones in their mind. All their personal information are being stolen by big companies. These people are just seen as data. Data is gold in todays post-modern world. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have aided in data collection, sorting, analysing and using it for profit. It is no surprise that we will see advertisements on internet of what we want to see. All our psyche is being profiled. The youth of today have to develop a strong sense of will power, realise the importance of time, give more importance to learning, skill development and health and come out of the endless loop of inertia. There is a huge herculean task on parents, teachers and peer group to guide the youth and make the society inclusive.