Smartphone addiction causes children's mental retardation

Joharin is the two-year old daughter of Reza and Khadija. She just loves to watch cartoons on smartphone. Whenever the baby cries, her parents immediately hand over their smartphone to her and it works like magic. Joharin stops crying as soon as she gets the smartphone. It is often seen that when the girl does not want to eat, mother Khadija tries to feed her quickly, keeping the baby busy with the smartphone.
At the end, the situation is such that eating, sleeping, playing -- she wants a smartphone for everything. Her mother suddenly discovered one afternoon that Joharin's right eye was looking unusual.
She rushed to the doctor with her tiny tot. After completing all procedures, the doctor said that the cornea of Joharin's right eye had moved due to constant staring at the smartphone for a long time. As a result, she was looking cross-eyed, reports BSS.
In a recent research, it was seen that on an average a child in Bangladesh uses a smartphone for around three hours a day.
A significant number of children in the country use smartphones for even five hours a day on an average. The research found that the excessive use of smartphones by the parents, encourages their children to get addicted to the devices.
According to paediatricians and mental health experts, children easily get addicted to smartphones through the excessive use of the device, and it is leaving a huge negative impact on the child's early social and emotional development, hampering the development of their multifaceted skills.
According to the latest data of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), the number of mobile phone users in the country is 183.8 million.
Among them, currently the number of internet users is 131.9 million, which is 32 per cent of the total population.
Meanwhile, 110.97 million people use the internet on their mobile phone, which is 90.79 per cent of the total internet users. Also, the number of smartphone users is 53 million.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), as of 2022, the total number of children aged five to 17 years in the country is 3.99 million. Among them, 41 per cent above the age of five use the internet.
Recently, a group of researchers from Jahangirnagar University studied the effect of smartphone use on children. It shows that in Bangladesh, parents who use smartphones for three hours or more every day, the risk of their children becoming addicted to the phones is about 90 times higher than that of children who do not use the devices.
Moreover, 92 per cent of children use a parent's smartphone and eight per cent of children have their own. In this research, it is also seen that whenever the child is crying, does not want to eat or whenever the parents want to finish their own work, they give smartphones to their child to keep him/her busy. The child is calmed down by showing cartoons on the phones.
About the negative effects of smartphone use on children, one of the members of the research team Professor Dr Mohammad Nazmul Haque said: "Smartphone addiction has become a big problem nowadays. Smartphone-addicted children are 500 times more likely to develop mental health problems and 230 times more likely to have physical health problems than non-phone-addicted children. It has a variety of detrimental effects on the physical and mental health and cognitive development of pre-school children. However, 50 percent of mothers believe that their children can learn a lot using smartphones."
Psychologists identify this attraction of children and teenagers towards mobile phones and the internet as internet addiction or mobile phone addiction. In this context, paediatrician and president of Bangladesh Children's Physicians Association Professor Dr Manjur Hossain said: "Dopamine neurotransmitter is released from brain cells while watching TV, mobile games
or any kind of virtual entertainment. This dopamine transmits a good feeling to our mind. As a result, we become addicted very easily."
Meanwhile, Associate Professor of Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College, Dr Farzana Robin identifies internet addiction as not a disease but a major problem responsible for many diseases.