ahmedabad asif rana 34 an archaeologist from pakistan is experiencing a muchneeded relief from compulsive connectedness since logging out of his social media accounts since august 1 inshada bashir a 36yearold entrepreneur from jammu kashmir had experienced this blissful oblivion to the trappings of the web when she had disengaged from gadgets last year this quest to log out of the virtual world is what connects rana bashir and 4000odd dopamine junkies from across the globe they have taken up a digital fasting and compassion challenge thrown by a jain organizationwhile bashir had taken the jain foundations digital detox challenge last year with 1100odd participants its been nearly three successful weeks of abstaining from gawking at the screens for rana currently he says he already feels more focused on the pretext of running a business i was hooked on my mobile and computer almost 24x7 taking a break only to catch a wink it has been quite challenging for me to not flip from one app to the other every few minutes said bashir rana said that as a scholar of comparative religions its not difficult for him to understand the ethos of jainism asif rana is also working on a project of documenting jain heritage in pakistan through soas london university more groups and communities should join hands to initiate such programmes he saidjain foundation headquartered in bangalore came up with this challenge to help people get real considering an increasing dependence on technology for all human functions including sleeping waking up and eating and drinkingramesh kumar shah founder of jain foundation told toi that the participants have opted for digital fasting in three categories five hours a day eight hours a day or 24 hours a day in the monthlong contest that took off on august 1 it has seen registrations from the us the uk the uae australia canada and african nations the youngest participant is nine and the oldest a septuagenarian the winners will get an allexpenses paid pilgrimage to palitana said the organizersits the second edition for us and compared to the past year we are seeing a fourfold rise in participant numbers but this time around we also want to inculcate compassion said ramesh kumar shah founder of jain foundationaccording to the contest rules the participants should perform an act of compassion towards their community members which could include paying someones bill or donating clothes etc the participants will get 12 points for digital detox and 25 points for compassion the maximum points one can earn is 1147 he saidafter the pandemic resulted in a spike in digital media consumption citybased psychologists and psychiatrists saw many people ranging from children to the elderly trying to wean themselves off the lure of the constant stimulidr mahendra mehta 77 a ukbased physician and a participant said that excess dependence on gadgets was the cause of many health issues chaturmas four months of monsoon considered to be the time for devotion