When a student, immersed in the glow of a mobile phone screen, finally opens a textbook, they are not merely transitioning from one medium to another, they are attempting to shift from one sense of time to another. Screen time is fragmented, fast, and emotionally charged; book time is slow, deep, and attention dependent. Losing focus after reading just two pages is not a personal failure, it is a socially produced mental habit. This habit is cultivated through a culture of endless scrolling, where the slightest flick of a finger delivers new stimuli while old forms of sustained attention are abandoned.
This fractured attention is accompanied by the fear of missing out, or FOMO. As the poet once said: “Oh, ‘I am losing, I am losing,’ always afraid, losing it in a glance.” (Ohe harai harai sada bhoy hoy- lines are from Rabindranath Tagore’s famous song, Majhe Majhe Tobo Dekha Pai) Indeed, being offline feels like missing something critical happening in the world. Yet this fear is not a natural mental response, it is a strategy of emotional management designed by digital platforms. In media studies terms, it can be understood as Affective Governance, where user curiosity, anxiety, and desire are controlled to keep them engaged on screens for extended periods. Bangladesh’s youth are among the most intense test subjects for this emotional governance.
This reality plays out daily through TikTok, Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. These short-form videos are built on emotion, entertainment, and instant gratification: humor, drama, hyper-drama, local memes, dance, music, and viral audio snippets all combine into a visual sugar rush. Such content is rapidly consumable but just as quickly forgettable, training the mind to prefer immediate pleasure and rendering sustained reflection exhausting.
Analysing the political economy behind this entertainment structure inevitably brings Christian Fuchs’ concept of digital capitalism into focus. Fuchs shows that social media users are not mere consumers, they are products themselves. As Bangladeshi youth scroll for hours on end, they provide unpaid digital labor: their time, attention, emotions, and information become raw material for algorithms.
These algorithms are not neutral technology. They are deliberately designed for the attention economy, where every second is monetised. Algorithms prioritise content that maximises emotional arousal: laughter, anger, surprise, or empathy: stimulating reactions rather than thoughtful reflection. Questions are replaced by endless scrolling.
In this context, the Oxford Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year, “brain rot”, is more than an internet joke, it is a cultural diagnosis. Excessive consumption of low-quality digital content gradually erodes the brain. Neuroscience confirms that continuous algorithm-driven video consumption diminishes the prefrontal cortex’s functioning, the region responsible for responsible thinking, self-control, and long-term planning.
Bangladesh’s screen generation faces the highest risk of this erosion. According to BTRC, the country has over 131.4 million internet users, including more than 110 million mobile internet users. Affordable smartphones and low-cost data have eased digital access, but this access came without adequate mental or cognitive preparedness.
Consequently, social media is no longer just part of life for many, it is life. News, entertainment, relationships, politics, even commerce, are all confined to a few apps. Media literacy is nearly absent in schools. Families are unaware of their children’s screen habits. The state has yet to fully recognize algorithmic power as a political force.
The biggest surprise is this: the problem is not the content, the technology, or even the screen itself. The problem is that we have never learned to recognise attention as a civic right and a social resource. We worry about land grabs or controlling votes, but we overlook that seizing attention is the subtlest and most powerful form of control.
What is the solution? Media literacy must be incorporated into curricula. Families must cultivate screen awareness. The state must ensure algorithmic accountability. Stopping the scroll is not the solution, learning to question is. A generation that cannot question does not create history; it simply scrolls over the future.
The excessive use of mobile phones can be poetically understood through Jibanananda Das’ image of the silent camel’s neck. Under the dominance of over-scrolling and algorithmic control, humans are not just silent, they are disappearing into themselves. When the camel’s neck is still in the desert, the surrounding sounds, air, and life vanish; similarly, the screen has imposed a profound silence on the daily lives of youth. Social bonds, friendships, family ties, and local cultural sensibilities are slowly eroding. This is the ‘digital desert’ of modern life, where every human relationship falls away like silent signals.
This silence is not merely physical; it is emotional and psychological. People may sit together in the same room but do not look at one another; their eyes, minds, and thoughts are absorbed by screens. Kinship fades, friendship weakens, and connection to local heritage disappear. In Jibanananda Das’ words, it is a loneliness to be felt, not merely seen. Within the stillness, one senses a subtle pressure, the fading of sociality, the distance of kinship, a new form of solitude.
Expanding this metaphor further, screens carry an invisible sound, poetic loneliness. The silence of the camel’s neck mirrors the psychological state of a generation. Students, immersed in dance, music, memes, comedy, and reels, experience the quiet erosion of inner life. Finger flicks and eye movements deliver fleeting joy, while depth of thought and persistence of reflection vanish.
This is not just a personal habit, it is part of a social and cultural process. Just as the camel’s neck reflects the emptiness of the desert, the screen-centric lives of youth mirror the void in social networks, relationships, and heritage. A friend’s laughter, a relative’s touch, conversations in the neighbourhood, all have become silent, thin as shadows.
Ultimately, this poetic metaphor warns us: technology is not freedom; it is a powerful mechanism for controlling attention, relationships, and sociality. The camel’s neck silence and the digital desert together reveal a bitter truth: our lost lives, vanishing bonds, eroded kinship, all are isolated in the world of finger flicks and screens. All social ties are disappearing; relationships are helpless; affection, care, and love will run out. What remains is darkness, and face-to-face interaction is replaced by multimedia phones.
The writer is an Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Journalism, University of Chittagong and Researcher in New Media and Political Communication
