The Soul Gets Lost in the Screen
In a child psychiatric ward of a major hospital in Jakarta, a 15-year-old teenager sits silently, staring at a white wall. He has stopped attending school for three months. Every time his phone is taken away, his body trembles, his breath quickens, and his eyes fill with panic. Doctors call this condition nomophobia. The irrational fear of being without a mobile phone.
“This isn’t just addiction,” says Dr. Richard, a psychiatrist treating him. “He has lost his sense of reality.” Clinically, this is a form of digital dissociation, where someone gradually detaches from the real world. Their life shifts to a virtual space that offers instant dopamine hits, but no real meaning.
In today’s touchscreen era, dopamine, the small brain chemical responsible for pleasure, has become the culprit behind many emerging mental health symptoms. Users grow dependent on notifications, rising likes, and read receipts.
All of this creates a cycle of instant rewards in the brain, similar to what is observed in light drug users. The difference? This time the needle is replaced by a five-inch screen that never leaves the hand.
Studies in psychiatry, including research by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), show that screen exposure exceeding four hours a day among children and adolescents can increase the risk of anxiety disorders, attention deficit symptoms, and even sleep-deprivation psychosis. A mild hallucinations caused by chronic sleep disruption.
Dopamine Fatigue Syndrome
Beneath these medical terms lies a deeper tragedy: the erosion of the human capacity to fully engage in ordinary communication. Many young patients arrive at counseling sessions no longer able to make eye contact. They speak quickly, as if typing messages in their heads. When asked to draw their emotions, the results are flat, a blank screen.
In developmental psychology, this is called deprivation of affective resonance. An emotional impoverishment. Humans learn empathy from faces and voices, not emojis. When face-to-face interactions are replaced by digital communication, the connection between souls deteriorates.
Psychiatrists are now observing new symptoms absent from textbooks two decades ago, referred to as “dopamine fatigue syndrome.” Patients grow bored quickly with real-world activities. Digital stimulation has raised their threshold for pleasure too high. The world feels slow, dull, and “colorless,” often leading to latent depression. It is not sadness, but a loss of the ability to feel.
Digital Detox
Some psychiatrists are advocating digital detox therapy as part of mental recovery. It is not merely about giving up gadgets; children and adolescents are encouraged to restore the brain’s natural rhythm through silence, eye contact, and human interaction. Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian trauma and addiction expert, calls this phenomenon “the erosion of presence”. The gradual loss of human presence due to overwhelming digital stimulation.
Yet the environment clearly shapes these outcomes. Therapy alone is not enough if society continues to worship limitless connectivity. Schools push nonstop online learning. Parents calm children with devices. Companies demand employees always be “on.” We are all living in a social laboratory, testing how long human souls can endure without silence.
As the psychiatrist in Jakarta said, “It’s not just the brain that is damaged, it’s the capacity to feel.”
In this era of technological adaptation, what we need may not be stronger or faster signals. What we need is pause, conscious rest, to reconnect with the world beyond the screen. To retrain our sensitivity to the voice of the heart, which cannot be typed or replied to with emojis.
Now, may be the time to reflect: how “sane” is our relationship, and that of our children and adolescents, with the devices we hold in our hands, without a break?
— DS
PSY 081125 411 1