Dr Nitin Kulkarni
There is a scene that has become increasingly familiar in homes across India.
It is well past midnight. The house is silent, wrapped in darkness. A parent wakes up for a glass of water and notices a faint blue light escaping from beneath a bedroom door. Inside, a teenager sits on the bed, headphones on, eyes fixed on a mobile screen. A game is still in progress. Time has disappeared.
“Haven’t you slept yet?”
“Just ten more minutes.”
Every parent knows those ten minutes rarely end in ten minutes.
They stretch into another hour, sometimes two. Sleep eventually comes, but only after the body’s natural clock has surrendered to the endless scroll of videos, games and notifications.
The following morning follows a predictable pattern. The child struggles to wake up before noon. Coffee replaces breakfast. A mobile phone becomes the first object touched after opening one’s eyes. The day begins long after the sun has climbed high into the sky.
This is no longer an occasional holiday routine. For many young people, it has quietly become a way of life.
A Generation At War With Its Biology
Every generation embraces new technology. That, by itself, is neither unusual nor undesirable.
But while technology evolves rapidly, human biology does not.
The human brain still needs uninterrupted sleep. The body still depends on circadian rhythms that have evolved over thousands of years. Eyes still need darkness. The nervous system still requires periods of silence and recovery.
No smartphone update has changed these realities.
Yet modern lifestyles increasingly encourage young people to live as though biology can simply be negotiated with. Screens extend the day indefinitely. Artificial light convinces the brain that midnight is still evening. Social media creates the fear of missing out, while online games ensure there is always one more level to complete.
The result is not merely reduced sleep—it is a gradual disruption of the body’s internal rhythm.
What Childhood Once Looked Like
Every generation risks romanticising its own childhood. This is not an argument for returning to a world without technology.
But it is worth remembering what children once experienced naturally.
Summer vacations meant sleeping under open skies, waking to birdsong, spending long hours outdoors, reading books, cycling through neighbourhoods and talking endlessly with friends and family.
Today’s children have access to extraordinary digital opportunities that previous generations never imagined.
Yet many have lost something equally valuable.
Some rarely see a sunrise except through a mobile wallpaper. Morning has become an abstract concept rather than a lived experience.
The concern is not nostalgia. It is health.
The Silent Cost Of Sleepless Nights
Sleep deprivation rarely announces itself dramatically. Instead, it accumulates quietly.
A little less patience. A little more irritability. Difficulty concentrating. Reduced motivation. Lower physical activity. Less face-to-face conversation. Gradually, these changes begin shaping personality itself.
Teenagers often believe they are immune to long-term consequences. At twenty, the body appears forgiving. Nights spent awake seem harmless. But biology keeps its own account.
Months become years. Poor sleep combines with sedentary lifestyles, excessive screen exposure and declining physical activity. What begins as an altered routine slowly becomes an altered life.
Medical science increasingly links chronic sleep deprivation with anxiety, depression, obesity, metabolic disorders and declining cognitive performance. The body eventually demands payment for borrowed sleep.
Parents Are Losing More Than Sleep
Perhaps the deepest concern is not about screen time itself. It is about communication.
Parents usually begin by requesting. “Sleep early.” Then they explain. Then they warn.
Eventually, many simply stop speaking because every conversation follows the same script.
“Everyone does it.”
“Our generation is different.”
“You worry too much.”
“We know what we’re doing.”
These responses are not unique to today’s teenagers. Every generation has believed its parents failed to understand it. But something feels different today.
Technology has not merely occupied children’s attention. In many homes, it has replaced conversation altogether. Families increasingly share the same roof while living in entirely separate digital worlds.
The silence that follows is often mistaken for peace. It is not. It is distance.
Beyond Screen Time
The debate should not become another simplistic argument about banning mobile phones or blaming technology. Technology itself is not the enemy.
Digital platforms educate, connect and create opportunities unimaginable just a decade ago. The real challenge lies in balance.
When screens replace sleep, replace conversations, replace outdoor activity and replace family life, they begin changing childhood itself.
Parents, too, face difficult questions. Children often imitate what they see. Adults who spend evenings constantly checking emails or endlessly scrolling through social media cannot convincingly argue that young people should behave differently.
Healthy digital habits must become a family culture rather than a set of rules imposed only on children.
Rebuilding The Conversation
The solution is unlikely to come through stricter punishments or longer lectures. Children need boundaries, but they also need dialogue.
Families need technology-free meals, shared routines, outdoor experiences and conversations that are not interrupted by notifications. Parents do not need to win every argument. They simply need to ensure that communication never stops.
Because the greatest loss is not when a child sleeps at two in the morning. It is when parents realise they no longer know what keeps their child awake.
The Greatest Fear
Every parent understands a baby’s cry without words. They recognise anxiety before it is spoken. They celebrate first successes and quietly carry first failures as though they were their own.
Then one day, the same child grows up, looks directly into their parents’ eyes and says, “You don’t understand me.”
Perhaps every generation has said those words. But in the digital age, they carry a deeper sadness.
Not because parents have stopped trying to understand their children. But because the conversations that once built that understanding are slowly disappearing behind glowing screens.
(The author is additional chief secretary to Governor, Jharkhand. Views expressed are personal)
