Technology in Mental Health

You probably recognize the following situation: a teenager slumped on the couch, eyes glued to a smartphone, fingers flying across the screen for hours. Completely forgetting the world around them, inattentive to time, family or even hunger. While scenes like this have become commonplace in modern households, they signal a deeper issue that many parents underestimate: screen addiction in teens.Recent studies show that the average teenager spends more than 7 hours per day on screens for entertainment alone, this does not include time spent on schoolwork. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this trend, normalizing excessive screen usage as a coping mechanism for boredom, stress and isolation. Experts now warn that what started as necessity during lockdowns has, for many, evolved into compulsive habits that are difficult to break.