SINGAPORE – Children and teenagers cannot take their eyes off their gadgets and smartphone screens, which are fuelling a problem of addiction and increasing behavioural issues.
Counsellors and social workers in Singapore say more youngsters are dealing with various forms of digital addiction, ranging from excessive use of social media and the internet to countless hours spent on gaming and pornography.
They told The Straits Times that devices are here to stay, and it is almost inevitable that the battle with technology for children’s attention will grow.
Touch Community Services, which runs a counselling intervention programme for young people struggling with excessive use of digital devices, saw about 111 such cases in 2022, up 58 per cent from 70 in 2019.
We Care Community Services, an addiction recovery centre, said it has seen over 20 per cent more referrals for gaming addictions post-pandemic, compared with pre-Covid-19 years like 2019.
More queries and calls from schools and parents about digital addiction issues have also been coming in over the past three years, it said.
Many inquiries are from parents seeking guidance and advice on how to cope with children who are showing signs that they may be overly attached to their devices, said We Care’s clinical director Tham Yuen Han.
Ms Andrea Chan, deputy director of Touch Mental Wellness, said the agency has handled cases of youth who skipped school due to their gaming habits, threatened suicide when their parents turned off the home Wi-Fi, or ran away from home when their parents stopped them from gaming.
Cases would come to light when parents notice a decline in their children’s grades, reduced family engagement or time spent with their friends, she added.
Dr Melvyn Zhang, a consultant at the Institute of Mental Health’s (IMH) National Addictions Management Service (Nams), said digital addiction issues, including gaming addictions and excessive digital device usage, are becoming increasingly pertinent, particularly among children.
As technology becomes more embedded in daily life, concerns about the potential impact on mental health and well-being are growing, he said.
Nams typically sees individuals aged 13 and older for issues relating to digital device usage or addiction. As internet addiction is categorised under a broader spectrum of behavioural addictions in its data, IMH does not have figures for the digital addiction cases it sees yearly.
Nearly half of Singaporean youth between the ages of 15 and 21 have “problematic smartphone use”, according to research by IMH reported in August.
This was defined in terms of dependence on devices, time spent on them, and the problems caused, like whether users felt fretful without their devices, and experienced physical discomfort like pain in the wrists or back of the neck from prolonged use of smartphones.
The study found that affected individuals were at least three times more likely than those without problematic smartphone use to have symptoms of moderate or severe depression, anxiety and insomnia.
In another study by IMH released in September, more than one in four young people here reported using social media excessively – more than three hours a day.
Around one in five young people had been cyber bullied through mean, aggressive or rude messages online. Those who experienced such bullying were about twice as likely to have had severe or extremely severe symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress.
One girl, who spoke to ST on condition of anonymity, said she had depressive thoughts after spending excessive amounts of time on social media and receiving hateful online messages.