Doctors and specialists have affirmed that digital balance has become a necessity for children and adolescents growing up today in a fully digital environment, noting that digital usage now shapes a significant aspect of children's identity, mental health, relationships, and neurocognitive development. They stressed that achieving digital safety requires creating a digitally balanced environment as a shared responsibility among the family, school, and community.
Paediatric specialist Dr Pankaj Nandlal Tardeja said that digital safety is becoming increasingly important as children and adolescents engage with the digital space, through enabling them to use technology in a safe, healthy, and responsible manner, and protecting them from harmful content, cyberbullying, contact with strangers online, privacy violations, electronic fraud, excessive screen use, and unhealthy digital habits.
He added that children's understanding of the concept of digital safety enhances their ability to use technology wisely throughout their lives, in ways that benefit their personal development, their community, their country, and the world around them.
He further noted that excessive use of digital devices affects many aspects of a child's life, particularly health and academic achievement, as it may lead to sleep disorders, vision problems, poor posture, reduced physical activity, declining academic performance, shorter attention spans, and a negative impact on mental health and family relationships. Among adolescents, it may also contribute to increased irritability, anxiety, low mood, social isolation, unhealthy dietary habits, and difficulty managing time.
Digital empowerment
For her part, Dr Sabreen Al Feki, a psychological specialist, explained that raising children and adolescents in a digitally balanced environment is a fundamental factor in supporting their psychological and social wellbeing. She emphasised that the goal is not to keep children away from technology, but to empower them to use it in a balanced way that supports their psychological, social, and academic development.
She defined digital addiction as a state of excessive attachment to the use of electronic devices, the internet, electronic games, or social media, whereby usage becomes out of control and negatively affects study, sleep, social relationships, and mental and physical health.
Among its most prominent indicators are difficulty stopping device use despite wanting to, feeling anxious when access is denied, neglecting daily activities and hobbies, spending long hours in front of screens without awareness of time passing, and a negative impact on academic performance as well as family and social relationships.
Shared responsibility
Psychological specialist Mina Shafiq explained that digital addiction develops in children and adolescents because of a digital environment built on delivering small, rapid rewards continuously, which attracts them greatly, especially at an age when individuals tend to seek immediate gratification. Other activities, such as studying or developing skills, by contrast require more time and effort to yield tangible results, making digital content more appealing to them.
He added that this may drive a child or adolescent to spend longer periods on digital devices impulsively, in pursuit of more of those quick rewards. As this behaviour is repeated, the negative effects begin to appear in their studies, social relationships, and surrounding environment, which may contribute to the gradual development of digital addiction.