Reports about internet addiction can often be wildly exaggerated

The latest de-addiction regimen is for the internet. This, among other things, goes to prove yet again that India is a country of extremes. While most Indians haven’t yet experienced a close encounter of the third kind with cyber space, some who have access, at least to the slooow, loading, loading connectivity of a 2G phone, are punch drunk on this new source of intoxication.

Of course, it is possible to argue that this is just giving the internet a bad name, to give grudging parents anew reason to cry foul when the apples of their eyes attach themselves to some imaging device with leech-like tenacity for hours on end. People who spend their waking hours trawling social media or nether regions of the cyber universe probably suffer from some deficiency of neuro-chemicals to begin with. If there had been no worldwide web to snare them, they would still probably have manifested their malady in other forms, including that of a bookworm, which some people find relatively respectable, too.

The remarkable thing about the internet is how diverse is its universe. You can read Plato or Thomas Picketty, watch videos that would singe the virtuous or wade through the tonnes of woe, hope, joy and yearning that people litter the web with; or even simply follow an online course to get de-addicted from the internet.