Late night soirées

“For people who stay in hostels like I do,the night is the only time you have for yourself. After spending the day in college and then the evenings with your friends,it is only late in the night that you can be alone. It is natural to want some time to read or catch up with television shows,” says Abhishek Anand,an engineering student. With the advent of technology in the country,students nowadays have a lot of choices to pass time. Laptops have become personal entertainment units,which are used to store movies,music and to keep in touch with friends. Even though Internet in India is not as fast as it is abroad,Broadband connections in most homes,LAN servers in college hostels,and Wi-Fi campuses have made a lot more accessible on the Internet. Explains Faiz Dholkawala,a student of the Indira College of Engineering,“With fast Internet,applications like Skype work which helps me keep in touch with my friends abroad. Because of the time difference,they are available only during the evening,which is our night.”

As the mobile boom hit India,nobody benefited from it more than teenagers did. “Night calling in India is extremely cheap,almost half of what it costs in the day. As almost all friends have cell phones now,they use the night time to talk to their boyfriends or girlfriends,” laughs Vigya Atri,a media trainee. On a serious note,she observes “There is generally a lot of hustle and bustle in the hostel at night,making it impossible to sleep early. Sometimes we girls hold movie marathons or just gossip sessions. It’s all a part of hostel life.”

Social networking has also caught the fancy of teens in India. Facebook,Orkut and so on have become regular haunts,ensuring that teens spend at least two hours in a day updating their profiles. Or as Saiba Singh,a Symbiosis student says,“Boredom drives us to play games like Poker,Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook. Then once we start,it’s hard to stop and log off.”

Although if recent findings are to be believed,technology may only be partly responsible for the teenagers’ sleep abnormalities. Researchers now believe that the biological clock of teenagers run two hours later than that of adults and pre-teens,probably due to hormonal reasons. Dr Shailesh Chowgule,a psychiatrist,opines “Its is not wholly unhealthy to stay up late into the night if the body is getting its required quota of sleep. However,I would advise against it as it disturbs your natural biological clock. Also,the activities that one indulges in to keep awake can become addictive and hence prove harmful in the long run.”