In a candid reflection on the social impact of technology, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader and Andhra Pradesh minister Nara Lokesh has warned that parenting in India is undergoing a troubling shift - one where digital platforms are fast replacing traditional family systems as the primary influence in a child's life.
"If you look at it in the past, families were joint families and we would learn a lot. We would serve our elders first and learn how to respect, socialise, discuss various issues across the table. But today's families have become very nuclear and under work pressure, the child is outsourced to Instagram or various other social media platforms where today socialisation is happening on social media. It's not happening within the family," Lokesh told NDTV.
"Whilst we were a joint family, the advantage was that, the parents or the grandparents would take care of the child. There's a lot of values that we would actually learn from," he added.
Lokesh said he believes that value systems should be embedded not only in homes but also in classrooms. As part of the TDP's education blueprint, he is advocating a broader approach that integrates respect, empathy, and responsibility into the schooling experience.
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"Definitely mother tongue is important, no second thoughts about it and this is something that we go to great lengths in our own child's case and third, it's not just about Iron Man, Superman, it can also be about Hanuman, Rama. There's great learnings and that's where all comic books in that sense is what he also enjoys," Lokesh said.
His comments come at a time when concerns over screen addiction, short-form content, and AI-generated misinformation are on the rise among educationists and child psychologists. According to a 2023 UNICEF report, over 70% of Indian children between the ages of 8 and 15 now have unsupervised access to smartphones.
