new delhi has the covid19 pandemic worsened addiction to the internet among children the footfall at psychiatric outpatient departments in hospitals especially those offering help to kids hooked to the net be it for online gaming chatting with friends or sharing videos offers a glimpse of the problemat aiims the number of parents seeking help for their children among them the most being those addicted to online gaming has increased significantly after the pandemic said dr yatan pal singh balhara who is in charge of the cyber addiction clinic at the hospital started in 2016balhara said due to the pandemic the special clinic was shut till about a fortnight ago but after it resumed services it was inundated with requests from parents seeking help nearly 80 of them are related to online gaming 15 about excessive use of social media and the remaining 5 related to problems like pornographythe parents of a class xi student name withheld on request approached aiims because their son was gaming online for hours and wasnt willing to give up the habit the son even hit his father when the latter tried to take away the laptop in another case a class ix student hooked to online gambling spent rs 75000 in a single week on his parents credit carddr roma kumar senior consultant psychologist at sir ganga ram hospital said i was recently approached by the parents of a young girl who had developed mental and emotional issues due to addiction to online streaming services the girl would stay awake all night to finish the tv series and sleep during the day it continued for six to seven months she developed insomnia and began hallucinating which is when the parents panicked and brought her to hospital we had to put her on psychiatric medications and counsellingeven in the prepandemic era internet addiction in schoolchildren was a reality during the pandemic however the problem increased multiple times pointed out dr sameer parikh head of mental health and behavioural services fortis healthcare we are seeing a threefold increase in such cases in the opd and the telehelpline too is flooded with calls for help from worried parentsso what changed during the pandemic first the schools were closed and classes were being held online this increased the childrens access to digital technologies secondly social interactions shifted online due to restricted physical movement forced by covid spend more time online led to the addiction as for online gaming doctors said these activities were designed to attract young people and were addictive in nature online gaming causes the same kind of craving and withdrawal that you see with any other addiction such as substance abuse parikh explainedwhat is the solution to this balhara of aiims says internet use is one of the important pillars of learning and growth in todays time and therefore it may not be advisable to prevent school children from using it he however added that it may be prudent to promote safe usage