Summary
In an op-ed in The Hindu, Derick H. Lindquist, Dean of the Jindal School of Psychology and Counselling at O.P. Jindal Global University, argues that constant exposure to social media and generative AI while the brain is still developing may weaken attention, self-control and independent thinking.
He notes that the prefrontal cortex, which supports planning and impulse control, keeps maturing into early adulthood and that platform features such as infinite scroll and likes create reward loops that drive compulsive checking.
He warns that AI can replace, not just assist, the mental effort through which learning happens. With about 65 crore Indians under 25, he calls on parents, schools and policymakers to act without waiting for definitive proof of harm.
The essay uses this argument to explore a larger theme: why convenience and growth are not the same thing.
WHY IT MATTERS FOR UPSC & STATE PCS
An op-ed in The Hindu on 19 October 2026 warned that unregulated social media and generative AI may undermine cognitive development in India's young population and called for guidance from parents, schools and regulators.
Standard News
Why the Easiest Path Is Not Always the One That Grows Us
Every tool that saves effort raises the same quiet question: if the effort was how we grew, what happens when it disappears? The question is older than smartphones, but it has never been asked about so many young minds at once. India has about 65 crore people under 25.
The brain grows by doing The prefrontal cortex
- the part of the brain that supports attention, planning, working memory and impulse control - keeps maturing into the mid-twenties. During adolescence the brain also prunes itself, cutting pathways that go unused and strengthening those that are used. What a young person repeatedly does, the brain becomes better at; what is consistently outsourced, it does not build. Navigation offers a clear example. Studies of London taxi drivers by Eleanor Maguire linked the demanding work of learning the city's streets to the hippocampus, the brain region central to spatial memory. Research since then suggests that relying on GPS reduces how much people engage that region. The app is not harmful; it simply does the part of the work that used to build the skill. Generative AI extends this to thinking itself. A small MIT Media Lab study of 54 participants, using EEG, found that people who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed the weakest brain connectivity and struggled to recall what they had written. The researchers called the effect cognitive debt. The sample was small and the authors acknowledge its limits, but one detail matters: participants who first wrote on their own and only then used the AI benefited from it.
The market sells the shortcut This is not only about individual habits.
Social media platforms earn more when users stay longer. Features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and likes deliver rewards at unpredictable intervals - the same variable reinforcement that makes slot machines compelling.
For adolescents, whose need for approval is strong and whose impulse control is still developing, that design is especially powerful. Governments are starting to respond. Australia passed a law in 2024 barring under-16s from social media, putting the burden of age checks on platforms.
India's DPDP Act, 2023 requires verifiable parental consent before platforms process children's data and the Ministry of Education's PRAGYATA guidelines (2020) recommended limits on screen time.
What the
two together reveal Seen side by side, the brain and the market point to one conclusion. The brain grows through effort; the market profits by removing it. Effortful learning is therefore something no platform has an incentive to provide - a kind of public good that families, schools and the state must protect.
That does not mean rejecting technology. Writing did not destroy memory and calculators did not end mathematics. The lesson from both the GPS and the MIT findings is about order: struggle first, then the tool. Schools can protect that order through oral examinations, supervised writing and real problem-solving; families through device-free time, sleep and unstructured hours.
Quick Facts
Key numbers & takeaways — revise these first
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India has about 65 crore people under the age of 25.
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The prefrontal cortex, which supports attention, planning and impulse control, keeps maturing into early adulthood, roughly the mid-twenties.
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During adolescence, synaptic pruning removes unused neural pathways and strengthens frequently used ones.
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Features such as infinite scroll, autoplay and likes create variable reinforcement - rewards at unpredictable intervals - which encourages repeated checking.
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The US Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest long-term study of brain development in children.
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Cognitive offloading means using tools to reduce the mental effort a task requires.
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Australia passed a law in November 2024 barring children under 16 from social media, in force from December 2025.
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India's DPDP Act, 2023 requires verifiable parental consent before processing the data of children under 18.
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The Ministry of Education's PRAGYATA guidelines (2020) recommended limits on students' screen time.
Connect the dots for your UPSC preparation.
Standard news covers the event. Log in to read our comprehensive analysis and uncover the hidden constitutional, structural, and ethical dimensions of this topic:
A developed neuroscience section on the prefrontal cortex, synaptic pruning, variable reinforcement and the GPS-hippocampus evidence, with its limits stated honestly.
A second, different domain - the political economy of attention - tracing why platforms profit from removing effort and how Australia and India are regulating it.
The historical line from Socrates' warning about writing to the calculator debate and why today's case is different in scale and intent.
A synthesis built on sequencing - struggle first, tool second - with concrete roles for families, schools and the state.
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