CIKS fellow and game creator Dhruv Mahajan shares his musings on digital environments, immersive tech and the new reality it is birthing.
Picture this: a family vacation, the dinner table set, and my younger siblings utterly engrossed in their YouTube videos. Welcome to the world of 'Generation Alpha', where meals are incomplete without a side of digital entertainment. As I watched my parents reluctantly surrender to this new norm, my curiosity piqued. What exactly was captivating these young minds?
Enter "Diana and Roma" [1] – a YouTube phenomenon that's not just big; it's colossal. With a staggering 28 million subscribers on their Hindi channel [2] alone, and a global network boasting over 200 million subscribers and 100 billion views, this isn't just popular content – it's a cultural juggernaut. Imagine this: nearly every child in the target age group worldwide is tuning in. Impressive? Absolutely. Concerning? You bet.
At first glance, "Diana and Roma" seems harmless enough. Playful scenarios, toy unboxings, and family adventures fill their videos. It's a world where colors pop, shapes dance, and everyday life becomes an exciting playground. Parents see a digital babysitter, a moment of peace in the chaos of child-rearing. But beneath this glossy surface lurks a more complex reality.
Let's peel back the layers. These videos aren't just entertaining; they're engineered to be addictive. The vibrant colours, rapid-fire visuals, and carefully crafted sound effects aren't random – they're a finely tuned dopamine delivery system [3] [4]. As children build intimate relationships with these digital worlds, they're simultaneously becoming strangers to their immediate surroundings.
But it doesn't stop there. These videos are subtly shaping children's understanding of success, pleasure, and social interaction. They're creating a generation primed for instant gratification, short-term thinking, and a warped sense of reality. It's like we're unwittingly enrolling kids in a masterclass on how to be dysfunctional in the real world.
Now, let's fast forward. What happens when these YouTube-raised kids grow up? We're already witnessing millennials and Gen Z pouring billions of hours into Instagram [5] and TikTok [6]. If breaking the habit of watching TV during meals is a struggle for adults, imagine the herculean task awaiting Gen Alpha as they try to reprogram their digitally conditioned minds.
Does this sound eerily familiar? It should. Remember Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," the famous dystopian novel where a futuristic society controls its citizens through "sleep-learning" - a process where children are played repeated messages while they sleep to indoctrinate them with society's values?
We're living our own version, except children are being conditioned in broad daylight, with the blessings of society. The media has become our modern-day hypnopaedia (sleep-learning), shaping young minds not in the dark of night, but in the glow of smartphone screens.
We're witnessing the dawn of a new colonialism. The colonists? Powerful media conglomerates driven solely by economics. The territory? The minds of the next generation. Children are growing up disconnected from their cultural roots, absorbing behaviours, values, and aesthetics that are often worlds apart from their heritage. Parents are left scratching their heads, wondering why their children seem like aliens from another planet.
But wait, there's more. As if this media invasion wasn't concerning enough, traditional education systems are struggling to keep pace. Teachers are now inadvertent competitors with Instagram influencers, and spoiler alert: they're not winning. The result? YouTube channels are becoming de facto educators, operating without oversight or curriculum standards. It's a Wild West of information, and children are along for the ride.
At its heart, this isn't just about screen time or digital addiction – it's about who controls the stories that shape the next generation's worldview. Throughout history, societies have used stories to pass down values, build identity, and make sense of the world. From grandmother's tales to community festivals, these narratives were once deeply rooted in local culture and wisdom. Now, they're being replaced by a homogenised stream of content crafted in distant boardrooms.
Think about it – when a child watches Diana and Roma, they're not just consuming entertainment. They're absorbing a particular story about what childhood should look like, what success means, and how to interact with the world. These narratives aren't just shaping their screen time; they're programming their dreams, ambitions, and understanding of reality itself.
However, within this challenge lies an incredible opportunity. What if we could harness the power of media to create educational content that's both captivating and meaningful? Imagine stories and games that instil values while keeping kids glued to the screen for all the right reasons. We have the chance to leverage technology and media in ways never before possible, potentially creating a generation of enlightened, culturally aware individuals.
The stakes are high, and the clock is ticking. Media isn't just shaping minds; it's moulding the future faster than we can update a school curriculum. By the time we address these issues in traditional classrooms, we might already be too late.
So, what's the game plan? We need to fight fire with fire. Let's create content that's just as engaging, but infused with true value, cultural richness, and genuine education. It's time to build a media ecosystem that competes with the global giants, one that keeps users hooked on growth, connection, and meaningful content.
The power to change this lies in recognizing that we are all storytellers. Every parent who shares a bedtime story, every teacher who inspires with a lesson, every content creator who chooses substance over sensation – they're all participating in the grand narrative that will shape our collective future. The stories we tell today become the reality of tomorrow.
Is it easy? No. Is it necessary? Absolutely. The future isn't just being shaped; it's being narrated. And it's time we all became more conscious of who's telling the story, and more importantly, what story we want to tell. For in the end, the content we consume today doesn't just shape our tomorrow – it defines our very existence, one story at a time.
This blog has been created as part of the CIKS Summer Fellowship 2024. Each fellow will share a series of blog posts summarizing their projects from the fellowship. Keep an eye out for the exciting work the fellows are doing.
About the Author: Dhruv Mahajan
Dhruv is an entrepreneur focused on solving for human wellbeing by designing video game experiences that not only entertain but also educate and heal. He shares a deep appreciation for the protocols of wellbeing that are rooted in Indic traditions. He has had formal training as a computer science engineer and sees video games as the most intuitive means to share Indic systems of wellbeing with the world.