So, who’s glued to the screens? A new, fast-growing vulnerable group is now addicted to phones

Srijani Samaddar, 37, blames the phone for the demise of her father due to a sudden heart attack earlier this year. The work-from-home UX designer believes it was his obsession with his smartphone that led to poor sleep, heightened anxiety, limited physical activity and a decline in his overall health.

She noticed the patterns in 2021 when she started living with her parents in Kolkata. Her father had got his first smartphone during the pandemic. “It started harmlessly but soon troublesome patterns emerged. The rabbit hole he went down was YouTube,” she recalls. He would watch content on “IndiaPakistan conflict” that sometimes bordered on the absurd. The algorithm kept feeding him the same.