By Camelia Nathaniel/ Daily News

Colombo, November 25 – Across Sri Lanka, from Colombo’s apartments to small-town living rooms, a silent but devastating crisis is unfolding. It does not roar like economic collapse or rage like political upheaval, yet its consequences are deeper and far more insidious. It is the crisis of the digital childhood. Parents hand over devices as pacifiers, schools adopt screens as teaching tools and toddlers spend hours swiping before they can speak full sentences. Many believe these devices “prepare” children for the future. Few understand that, according to one of Sri Lanka’s leading medical minds, the consequences include stunted brain development, shattered sleep patterns, emotional dysregulation, rising violence, addictive behaviour and an alarming surge in suicide ideation among youth.

To Dr. Lalith Mendis, former Head of Pharmacology at the University of Kelaniya’s Faculty of Medicine, this crisis represents the single most urgent threat to Sri Lankan children today. He has spent more than a decade studying the neurological and behavioural effects of digital screens on children and teenagers. Today he directs the Empathic Learning Centre in Colombo and the Centre for Digital Science, Right Learning, Career and Choices, both dedicated to reversing the damage. He speaks not with panic, but with a calm authority shaped by years of observing patterns in hundreds of young patients, many of whom arrive confused, angry, obsessive, or psychologically depleted.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily News, he said, “When I started the research in 2012, children were not studying, not sleeping and their food habits were being altered. I began seeing jittery eyes, eyes that looked like dancing pixels.” He followed his intuition and began documenting what he suspected: screens were interrupting essential neurological processes in young children. At that time, parents, teachers and even most doctors did not recognise screen exposure as a developmental toxin. “But when you look into a child’s eyes and you see that something isn’t right, you know. I kept seeing the same eyes, restless, flickering, unable to focus.”

Reward Systems

What he discovered over the next decade was deeply alarming. Digital screens, he now explains, fundamentally interrupt the processes of cognition, attention, emotional regulation, reward systems and even foetal neurological development. Children who should have been curious, creative and socially responsive were becoming inattentive, reactive and increasingly emotionally blunt. Many were so addicted to dopamine surges triggered by games and videos that they no longer experienced joy in normal activities such as meals, conversation, reading, nature, or human relationships.

But perhaps the most disturbing figure he shares is this: 30% of children in Sri Lanka are currently on psychiatric medication. And, he adds, many of these prescriptions were unnecessary, avoidable, or directly caused by digital overstimulation. “We have to teach our profession,” he says with gentle frustration. “When you prescribe drugs to a brain already overwhelmed by dopamine swings from screen use, you make the problem worse. There is only a very small place for drugs. Yet children are being medicated because doctors are hurried and parents are desperate.”

To understand how the crisis reached this point, one must understand the workings of a child’s brain and how screens forcibly interrupt these natural processes.

A child’s brain develops through exploration, through crawling, toddling, touching, climbing, tasting and problem-solving. The prefrontal cortex, which handles reasoning, planning, executive function, creativity and empathy, is shaped by millions of small decisions the child makes: reaching for a toy, navigating around a table, experimenting with blocks, listening to a parent’s tone or sharing a toy with a sibling. All learning is embodied and relational.

Prefrontal Cortex

Dr. Mendis illustrates this through a simple example. A toddler wants a cookie. He must think: where is the cookie? Where is mummy? How do I get there? He calculates distance without knowing numbers. He navigates obstacles without naming them. He learns action and consequence. His prefrontal cortex lights up with activity. Neural pathways strengthen with every attempt, success and failure.

“This is how brain connections develop,” he explains. “But the moment you give the little fellow the screen, he just looks at it. The screen is smart; the fellow is becoming stupid.”

With a screen, the child does not initiate, navigate, or conclude. He reacts. He taps. He obeys visual cues. He becomes a responder rather than a thinker. The prefrontal cortex takes a back seat while the more primitive, reactive parts of the brain dominate.

This is the foundation for what comes next: collapsing attention, behavioural issues, emotional volatility and addictive patterns.

By age 12, a child should have an attention span of around 45 minutes. Pre-schoolers manage 15–20 minutes. This is why traditional classrooms use short periods early in primary grades and longer ones later. But today’s digital child cannot sustain attention even for 10 minutes.

“Moment you are on the screen, the attention span drops,” Dr. Mendis states. Educational psychologists now document the same pattern, children cannot stay with a task unless it is dripping with instant gratification. The three key aspects of attention; span, depth and intensity, all erode.

The child can no longer sit still. He becomes restless, jittery, easily bored. In class, he hears the teacher’s voice but cannot process meaning. He fidgets, interrupts, distracts others, walks around, or stares into space.

This behaviour often gets mistaken for stubbornness or naughtiness.

“But it is neurological,” Dr. Mendis emphasises. “The brain has lost its capacity for sustained thought.”

This decline in attention is what leads parents to seek psychiatric help. Many doctors prescribe drugs such as methylphenidate (Ritalin), but Dr. Mendis argues that medication often worsens the situation when the underlying problem is screen addiction.

Silent Emergency

The most shocking revelation from his work is the statistic he repeats with pained urgency: “Thirty percent of kids in Sri Lanka are on psychiatric drugs.”

Not for psychosis or severe mental disorders, but for:

* attention problems

* hyperactivity

* sleep disturbances

* impulsive behaviour

* mood fluctuations

*exam stress

* anxiety

These are, in most cases, symptoms of digital overstimulation, not chemical imbalances.

“When the brain is already dopaminergic, already swinging between highs and lows, adding psychiatric medication can make it worse,” he warns. “But our doctors prescribe because they are used to prescribing. And parents demand quick fixes.”

The ease with which psychiatric medication is dispensed in Sri Lanka, often without long-term therapy or lifestyle changes, is deeply concerning. The real therapy, Dr. Mendis argues, lies not in pills but in replacing screens with physical, relational and sensory interaction.

Mother’s Digital Life

One of the most groundbreakingand least understood findings in his research involves pregnant mothers. Excessive digital exposure, emotional overstimulation and consumption of violent media disrupt neurochemical pathways in the mother. Among these disruptions are prostaglandins, hormone-like molecules that can cross the placental barrier.

“The prostaglandins in the mother, affected by her digital life, cross into the foetal brain,” he explains. “The baby becomes jittery in the womb.”

Even childbirth itself is affected.Childbirth depends on coordinated hormonal rhythms involving the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Digital overuse over stimulates the mother’s hypothalamus, disturbing the hormonal cascade required for natural labour. “That is why obstructed labour is increasing,” he notes.

He also highlights that violent movies, loud music and emotional overstimulation during pregnancy can negatively influence foetal emotional circuits. International bodies including the Royal College of Obstetricians now warn that no alcohol is safe during pregnancy because even a single teaspoon interferes with GABA pathways in the developing brain.

But digital overstimulation, he argues, is equally concerning and far less understood.

Dopamine Trap

Dopamine is the chemical of anticipation, reward, satisfaction and motivation. Under normal circumstances, called DA1, dopamine rises with focus and drops with completion. But digital content is designed to prevent the drop. Games, short videos and social media create a pattern of constant micro-rewards.

“When dopamine does not come down, it shifts from physiological to addictive,” Dr. Mendis explains. “All addictions begin with the screen.”

The most chilling behaviour he observes is emotional blunting. Children stop caring about relationships, responsibilities, or consequences. This is the soil in which dangerous behaviours, including violence and suicide ideationtake root.

Emotional intelligence develops through eye contact, touch, conversation and shared human experiences. Screens replace these with individualised sensory overload.

A disturbing new trend among adolescents is the loss of emotional bonding, especially romantic bonding. “When kids are dopamine high, romance doesn’t work,” Dr. Mendis says. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone is suppressed. Teenagers no longer desire companionship; they desire stimuli.

According to Dr. Mendis, the emotional landscape of today’s adolescents has shifted dramatically under the influence of digital screens. He explains that because screens blunt emotional sensitivity and suppress oxytocin, the hormone connected with bonding, in many young people,  no longer develop the natural curiosity, affection and relational warmth that typically emerge during adolescence. “When the digital screen has dumbed all that, they don’t think of romance even when they come to that age,” he notes, contrasting it with earlier generations when teenage boys openly pursued girls and formed innocent attachments. Today, however, the pattern has veered in more troubling directions.

He believes that many boys approach physical intimacy through a dopamine-driven mindset, impulsive, detached  and lacking emotional connection, leading some into exploitative behaviour, misuse of their own bodies, or risky encounters. Schools, he adds, have been forced to install CCTV cameras outside washrooms because of escalating concerns around inappropriate conduct. Girls’ schools face their own evolving challenges; with weakened emotional development and little expectation of genuine romantic connection. Some girls turn inward, attempting to cope alone, while others become vulnerable to cycles of digital exploitation, including the sharing of explicit images. The relationships that do form often become transactional or emotionally hollow, shaped by pornography and online content rather than mutual care. What was once a tender stage of human development, he laments, is now distorted by a digital environment that “has completely ruined the self-giving sense of romance that was meant to be part of healthy growing up.”

Suicide Cliques

One of the darkest consequences of digital addiction is what Dr. Mendis describes as “suicide cliques.” These are not depressed, isolated teenagers. These are stimulated, thrill-seeking, digitally influenced adolescents who form secret groups with the aim of carrying out a coordinated suicide attempt.

“They climb the highest place in the city and set a date, who will jump first.”

Before the act, they hold farewell parties. They treat the suicide as an event, a climax, a final thrill. The digital world has conditioned them to chase highs, not meaning. Many parents are blindsided because these children show none of the traditional signs of depression.

In one group of six, four children died. One was saved because her parents intervened consistently with warmth, presence and communication.

Children exposed to digital games often develop obsessive and perfectionistic behavioural patterns because these games reward predictable, programmed actions. Over time, they begin to expect real life to function with the same instant rewards and flawless outcomes. This conditioning produces a destructive form of perfectionism. Such children struggle immensely with failure, even in small doses and they increasingly find it difficult to tolerate imperfection in their parents or accept correction from teachers. When the world does not behave like a screen, fast, responsive and predictable, they respond with anxiety, rage, or withdrawal. These perfectionistic tendencies frequently lead to violent outbursts, emotional shutdowns, or even self-harm. In Sri Lanka, examination periods now reveal unprecedented levels of suicidal ideation among teenagers who cannot cope with the mere possibility of failure. They have grown up believing that, as in a digital game, a mistake simply allows you to restart without consequences, yet life offers no such reset button.

Screens are not only altering children’s internal worlds; they are breaking down the essential family rituals that once formed the emotional backbone of home life. Meal time, which Dr. Mendis describes as the most crucial moment of neurological and emotional development during a child’s day, is particularly affected. Traditionally, the dinner table is where oxytocin strengthens family bonds, serotonin creates feelings of satisfaction, new vocabulary is absorbed through casual conversation, fine motor skills are refined as children feed themselves and a sense of responsibility is internalised through simple routines.

When screens intrude on this sacred space, every one of these developmental processes is disrupted. A child who eats while watching a device becomes passive, inattentive and emotionally disconnected. “You are ruining the child’s brain,” Dr. Mendis warns emphatically. “Meal time is when the brain resets, and when the soul resets.”

Sleep patterns suffer similarly. Screen-dependent children often stay awake past midnight, which damages REM cycles, the essential dream phase responsible for memory consolidation and emotional processing. Disturbed REM sleep is strongly linked to trauma and heightened anxiety. “If the child wakes up with horrifying dreams,” he explains, “it is because the sleep cycle has been disrupted by the screen.”

Empathic Learning Therapy

Despite the severity of the crisis, Dr. Mendis is deeply hopeful because he has seen thousands recover. The key is replacing screen-based stimulation with sensory, physical and relational engagement. He developed Empathic Learning Therapy, rooted in Montessori principles, puzzles, art, physical challenges and relational coaching. He also created GARTS, Grips and Ropes Thrill Sport, a rope-based, barefoot activity system designed to reactivate the toes, fingers, soles and sensory pathways that screen use has dulled.

Parents are required to actively participate, especially fathers. “Dad must come. Dad must own the problem,” he insists. With 21 days of regular engagement, about an hour three times a week, even severely addicted children can reset their brains.

Across the world, many countries, such as France, the Netherlands and several British school systems, have already banned or tightly restricted screen-based learning for young children after recognising the significant neurological and behavioural harm it causes. Sri Lanka, however, appears to be moving in the opposite direction. “At a time like that,” Dr. Mendis observes, “our country trying to do screen-based teaching is oxymoronic and unscientific.” He argues that urgent, coordinated action is needed at every level of society.

The Ministry of Education, he says, must reconsider and halt digital-only teaching models that disregard global scientific consensus. Corporates should integrate parental education into their CSR programmes, helping families understand the dangers of unregulated screen use. Medical professionals must be trained to avoid defaulting to psychiatric drugs when the underlying issue is often digital overstimulation. Schools should develop pastoral care systems capable of detecting emotional and behavioural problems early.

And families, above all, must enforce strict screen routines to protect children’s mental and neurological health.

However, children can recover. Families can reconnect. Brain pathways can be rebuilt. Addictions can be broken. And a generation can be saved, if the lts around them act now.

“We have to make parents the therapists of digital recovery,” Dr. Mendis says softly. “And we have to start now.”

END