Page 2 of 2 Young India seeks ecstasy in
technology By Indrajit Basu
or on their iPods," said Dr Shetty.
"And interestingly, more than the fact that those
children are not performing well in their studies
or not mixing enough with others, what worries
many is the widening communication gap between
them and their children."
Nevertheless,
the technology-obsessed younger generation is not
a problem for India alone. Experts around the
world are grappling with the problem of how to
handle the "technology babies" - those born
between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, when the
technology wave swept the
world - for whom, besides being a nice thing to
own, a high-tech gadget is also an imperative in
life.
The US-based Kaiser Family
Foundation, an operation focusing on major
health-care issues, has even identified
"Generation M", eight-to-18-year-olds who are
spending an increasing amount of time using "new
media" such as computers, the Internet and video
games without cutting back on the time they spend
with "old" media such as TV, print and music.
"Kids are multi-tasking and consuming many
different kinds of media all at once," said Drew
Altman, president and chief executive officer of
the Kaiser Foundation. "Multi-tasking is a growing
phenomenon in media use, and we don't know whether
it's good or bad or both."
Still, India's
case may be unique. Some say that, largely, the
emergence of "Generation M" in the country is not
due to the adoption of technology per se, but to
the fact that India has pushed for globalization
too hard. Even as computers were introduced in
India in the early 1980s, it was not until the
mid-1990s that India felt the benefits of the
technology. Then suddenly, India started
transforming at a breakneck speed. For the younger
generation, said Shetty, India was a country with
huge opportunities and a potential for rapid
growth, and that meant "growing up under a lot of
pressure to perform and being able to do a number
of things at [the same] time".
"That
generation these days is bogged down with a
multitude of new and exciting things to grasp and
master, as their time to relax has almost
vanished," said Shetty. "You will hardly find the
young spending hours at coffee shops with an
interesting book to read. Now, they seek instant
relief, or ecstasy. Spending an hour chatting with
parents or a family member is boring, but many
younger Indians find surfing the 'Net or chatting
with a complete stranger thousands of miles away
thrilling."
Moreover, with prices of
entry-level gadgets plummeting rapidly, owning a
piece of high tech is within easy reach.
"Teenagers now feel that not owning a cell phone
or a laptop is a prestige issue, or owning an iPod
is making a fashion statement," said Shetty.
Nonetheless, India's "Generation M" has
support in some quarters. For instance, Subho Roy,
president of IAMAI, feels that parents are at
fault for not coping with technology. "Many just
issue instructions to their children instead of
engaging them in a dialogue," he said. "For
instance, parents find gaming a complete waste of
time, but few realize that allowing a 12-year-old
to play a computer game may help develop soft
skills."
Roy added: "I also think that it
is too early to conclude that the young people of
India are getting addicted to technology."
According to IAMAI, even though the
country's youth are the biggest segment going
online, as Internet penetration in the country
grows, non-working women and senior citizens (who
constitute about 20% of the Internet population)
are increasingly contributing to the rapid rise in
the Internet-user growth rates.
The IAMAI
survey says that although users between ages 18
and 35 are the biggest segment (50%) of India's
Internet population, the average time spent on
surfing, in terms of minutes per week, increases
with the age of the user, which shows that older
people spend more time on the Internet than
younger people, who are considered to be more
'Net-savvy. While schoolchildren spend an average
of 322.3 minutes a week on the Internet, college
students spend an average of 433.2 minutes per
week and older men spend an average of 580.5
minutes a week.
Clearly, the Internet is
making deep inroads into the everyday life of
Indians "and the revolution is benignly changing
the lifestyles of Indians across the country, and
not just the younger generation", Roy said.
Indrajit Basu is a Kolkata-based
journalist.
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