Arab world needs a strategy to combat digital overload

On any given evening in a typical Arab household, three generations may sit in the same room but live in different worlds, each glued to a personal screen. Conversation happens in short bursts and bedtimes seem flexible. The region’s high-tech revolution has opened wide a window on the world, but it has also created something many families do not know how to manage: a constant stream of digital distraction.

And the numbers tell their own story. In Saudi Arabia, 99 percent of the population have access to the internet and about half spends more than seven hours a day online, including about three hours on social media. In the UAE, users are online for an average of more than eight hours a day and spend close to three hours on social platforms. In both countries, access to social media is well above 90 percent of the population, among the highest figures in the world.

Those who watched the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing” might remember the Alfie Zappacosta love song “Overload.” Today, a song with that title would probably be about society’s obsession with smartphones, laptops and smartwatches, whose screens have become the backdrop to everyday life from morning until well past midnight.

Young Arabs are the most exposed to this new reality. The 2023 ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey found that about 74 percent of respondents across 18 Arab countries said they struggled to disconnect from social media, while 61 percent agreed that social media addiction was harming their mental health. In the Gulf Arab category, the share who said they could not switch off was even higher.

Parents have to try, at least some of the time, to be paragons of the behavior they expect from their children

Arnab Neil Sengupta

Clinical research now confirms what parents already suspected when they found their children awake at 2 a.m. behind glowing screens. A recent study of smartphone users in one Arab country found that higher scores on a smartphone addiction scale were strongly associated with severe depressive symptoms and insomnia. Studies of university students in other countries in the region have also linked long daily screen time with higher levels of anxiety, stress and poor sleep quality. Pediatric surveys in several Arab countries have suggested a connection between heavy screen use among school-age children and interrupted sleep, bedtime resistance and daytime tiredness.

As in other parts of the world, these habits are reshaping family life. Recent reports on the impact of the internet on families in the Arab Gulf states describe how the explosion of social media use has weakened the traditional socializing role of the family, as parents worry about losing their influence to powerful online forces. The reports talk about the paradox of “digital displacement,” in which constant connectivity has, in practice, distanced family members, with time on phones eating into shared meals, homework help or simple conversations.

Gulf-focused studies also point to physical complaints such as eye strain, fatigue and reduced physical activity linked to long hours on digital media. Clinicians in the UAE, for instance, report seeing more children with sleep disruption, attention problems and aggression when they spend many hours a day on social platforms. In many households, the day does not really end after midnight; it simply gives way to a night of mindless scrolling.

None of this is to argue that smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence ought to be shunned. Arab societies have gained a lot from better connectivity in education, business and civic engagement. But when an always-on lifestyle starts to damage mental health and family cohesion, the question is no longer only whether people should voluntarily log off from time to time. It is whether the Arab world needs a new social contract to cope with the challenges of the digital age.

Such a contract does not have to take the form of a single law or regional treaty. It can be an agreed but inviolable set of expectations about how families, schools, workplaces, technology firms and policymakers share responsibility for limiting digital overload in an era of almost permanent connection.

For families, the starting point is very basic. They must set aside times and spaces that are strictly offline: device-free meals and majlis gatherings, phones left outside bedrooms at night and clear limits on when a child gets their first smartphone or social media account. This will not be easy. It is hard to persuade a teenager to switch off at midnight if their parents are still sending messages at 1 a.m. But parents have to try, at least some of the time, to be paragons of the behavior they expect from their children.

Schools, employers and governments make up the rest of this contract. Around the world, dozens of education systems now restrict or ban smartphones during the school day, following UNESCO’s call for phones to be used only when they clearly support learning. Arab education ministries do not need to copy every foreign rule, but they can adopt the underlying idea that classroom time is mainly for focused learning and face-to-face social interaction. Simple steps can help: secure phone lockers during lessons and digital literacy sessions that explain how algorithms are designed to capture and hold attention.

The Arab world, with its young population, is well placed to experiment with a more balanced approach

Arnab Neil Sengupta

In the Gulf workplace, the ability to respond instantly has turned into the expectation that people will respond instantly. A healthier social contract would include some version of a right to disconnect, with clear guidance that messages sent after hours do not require immediate replies, except in emergencies or during truly critical projects.

Governments, for their part, should set clear boundaries for children and adolescents: basic guidelines on age-appropriate screen time, minimum standards for parental controls on devices sold locally and cooperation with social media platforms to curb addictive design features for young users. A small portion of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s big investments in data centers, AI hubs and cloud infrastructure could be reserved for digital well-being research, public awareness campaigns and better mental health services.

Critics will say that the genie of digital overload is already out of the bottle and that talk of a new social contract is naive. The modern economy runs on cloud servers and, for many young people, friendship and even romance are shaped by apps more than by face-to-face meetings.

They are right in the sense that there is no going back to the predigital era of rotary phones, telegrams and paperboys on bicycles. But a digital social contract is not about confiscating devices or asking students to go back to logarithmic tables in math class. Put simply, it is about deciding, sincerely and truthfully, what a society values and then adjusting its institutions, rules and daily routines to match those priorities. The Arab world, with its young population and strong emphasis on family and faith, is well placed to experiment with a more balanced approach.

To sum up, the choice between progress and well-being is a false one. There is no reason to believe one can be pursued only at the expense of the other. What is needed is a steady and strategic effort, by families and institutions together, to make sure that technology serves society and not the other way round.

• Arnab Neil Sengupta is a senior editor at Arab News. X: @arnabnsg