The Worst Addiction

 You may wonder at the title of this blog. Well, yes, any addiction is indeed BAD! Really, differentiating them degree wise is truly tough. It is essential though. Want to know why? 

Well, i would have to tell you a short little story. A week ago, i got a call from an unknown number. The person at the other end seemed extremely agitated. The voice, very low, was breaking. It turned out to be a student who had studied online the BCA Compulsory English course. 

As his version appeared rather bleak, and as he seemed emotionally unstable, i chose to talk to his parents. His hapless and helpless mother called up at about 1 p.m.  The story she unfolded for about forty five minutes was of her son's social media and mobile addiction.

The way she presented the case, all the typical qualities of an addict were very much visible; lying to others, self destructive tendencies, withdrawal woes, and so on.

Why do i call it the worst then? Because, unlike drugs or alcohol, mobile mania is not socially immediately recognised and/or rejected to be an addiction. Most people these days are inseparable from their mobiles, an appendix to their palms and fingers. 

Any number of people would not talk to you, but whip out their mobiles and start looking in to it. At times, this "in the mobile screen" version of the ostrich variety is an extremely arrogant and quite crude message to you of how much hateful you are to them, and how they absolutely want to avoid you.

An addict whose palm is forever fevicol fixed to the contraption and whose eyes are glued to the screen is hence difficult to decipher, to locate, and that is why, it is the worst addiction. Every other addiction, drinks, drugs, is obviously visible. The mobile addiction is difficult to decipher, detect and hence the worst. What do you say?

As for the student, i suggested to his mother that he should be encouraged to use Duolingo, for instance. Thus suddenly the mobile would not be yanked away from him, he would in turn learn a language instead of the horrible mobile games such as some PUBG, et al. Hope it has worked. I did send two messages wishing him well. Absolutely no response though. 

That entire episode disturbed me a lot because of the invisibility of the addiction. Hence the name game of this blog!

Pratima@Thin is the line between liking a mobile and the addiction thereof. The worst addiction it is in my opinion as it is invisible apparently.