Online life turns stressful

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Reams have been written about the ill effects of today’s teens spending too much time online, and if a recent study is to be believed, then one can add anxiety and depression to this long list. The study, conducted by Australian researcher Lawrence Lam and his Chinese colleague Zi Wen Peng, looked at more than 1,000 children across the world over a period of nine months.
They found that those spending more four to five hours a day doing casual surfing may end up moody, nervous, uncomfortable and often with signs of depression.
Second year sociology student Ridhima Sharma says she wasn’t happy with the way she was organising her work. As part of college activities, she was a member of various councils, which required her to be online for six to seven hours everyday. This, she says, not only stressed her mentally and physically, but also left her constantly restless.
“I was multitasking every time I went online. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep peacefully because of the restlessness. Being online makes you do whatever you want in the virtual space and I guess I would miss that the moment I would go offline. I would miss being around my friends and chatting and sharing my thoughts which led to the restlessness,” says Ridhima.
For mass media student Tanisha Deo, it was more about losing one’s identity and feeling lonely in cyberspace. “Sometimes there are so few people who really care for you in the real world and that is when we like to go online and look for friends there. But then you also realise how the online world is so fake, frauds on Facebook who promise they’re in love with you, flashers on Chatroulette, getting ditched on Second Life, that it leaves you totally disheartened and you don’t want to live in the real world either. I try to deal with it by hanging out more often with college friends, going to coffee shops and for dinner and sometimes the Saturday night parties at discs,” explains Tanisha.
Some other symptoms teens often complain about include feeling of indecision or of hopelessness, which results in rebellious behaviour. Nineteen year-old Tejas Singh doesn’t spend too much time online unless he requires it for some work.
“In the long run, aimlessly spending time online does affect me, and I had started to feel those changes in my personality. I would crib more and panic for every small thing. But now that I don’t go online too often has calmed me down,” says Tejas.