OLD HOBBIES GIVE WAY TO NEW ADDICTIONS

Those aged 10-35 across Indian cities and villages show one common feature: they're bored. Time on hand is diverted to digital addictions that bring comfort in their repetitiveness

- HARISH BIJOOR

HINK this out. What are you addicted to? What’s your addiction? What's your daily fix? All of us have one. It could be your morning newspaper read. It could be your morning cup of filter coffee. Or both. But each one of us has one, if not many.

Addiction, then, is the disease I am writing about. I call it one as it seems to be quite an epidemic as of now. It’s all around us. It is within us. And yet we don’t recognise it to be what it is. We continue oblivious, leading ostensibly happy lives.

Without pointing fingers out at the society all around us, let me talk of my personal addictions. I am addicted to my morning cup of coffee accompanied by my favorite newspaper every morning. If it’s a holiday for the newspaper, my coffee doesn’t taste half as good. And vice versa. I am addicted to the habit of posting on X, Threads, Instagram, and Linkedin first thing every morning. I need to do it every day. I am addicted to chocolate just as I am addicted to rice. A meal without rice is no meal to eat at all.

You have your addictions and I have mine. Some are addicted to cigarettes, some to alcohol, and some to endlessly flipping fingers on Instagram reels. All are addictions for sure. Some happened on their own by habit, and others got planted there by purpose. Either way, over a period of time, each one of us has a bundle of addictions which we have either bought into on our own or have been subliminally forced to own by someone out there profiting from the addiction business altogether. Whatever it is, there seem to be very few people around who can claim they are addiction-free. If you are one of them, I doff my ‘Mysuru peta’ to you.