Sir,
India is increasingly losing happiness by the year. World Happiness Report 2018 of the United Nations reveals that Indians are increasingly becoming unhappy. It scored only 4.190 on a scale of 0-10 in 2017, which is only a little more than the passing mark of 3.3 if life would have been an exam. It fell in global happiness ranking by 11 places in comparison to its fall in 2016 by four places. Only 23 countries out of 156 surveyed are unhappier than India, which ranked 133rd in the world. It means 84.61 per cent countries are happier than we are. We have lost our level of happiness during 2015-17 compared to 2008-10 by 0.698 points, making us the top 15th loser of the world ranking 128th out of 141. The fall was primarily due to declines in average life evaluations suffered due to a combination of economic, political, and social stresses. Increased rates of crime, conflict, suicide, and depression can be cited as its effect.
The rising rate of depression, particularly among adolescent, is correlated with the use of new screen technologies (smartphones, video games etc) and social media. Causation may run in both directions, from depressive syndromes towards screen time (as a kind of self-medication) and from screen time towards depressive symptoms. For example, addictive behaviours to the new technologies, and other depression-inducing conditions such as increased loneliness and feelings of alienation resulting from online rather than interpersonal interactions are growing. Video games, for example, seem to have six attributes of addiction: salience, mood modification (self-medication), tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. A recent report had revealed that excess facebook use was associated with lower self-reported mental health.
Yours etc…
Gyan Pathak
on-email
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