Kolkata: An upcoming Bengali flick 'Habji Gabji' deals with the perils of online exposure of children, whose condition has become worse after they were forced to enter it willy-nilly during the pandemic to attend online classes for the past two years and became addicted to mobile games.
Film director Raj Chakraborty said that due to the COVID situation, parents were forced to allow their children, even little ones, to become dependent on mobile hand sets for their lessons. What made made matters worse that it was not always possible for them to monitor their wards' online activities after it.
"The idea about the film struck us when a child member of our extended family developed certain behavorial disorders a couple of years ago. She withdrew from the people around her and became a loner. She was always seen with her mobile playing online games with friends she had made on the net from different parts of the world," Chakraborty's wife and a lead actor in 'Habji Gabji', Subhashree Ganguly told reporters on Sunday.
"Every effort to convince and dissuade the child would fail," she told reporters after an interaction with some parents and children about how addiction to mobile games can make their children unsocial, distracted and fidgety.
Subhashree, who did the research for the film along with Chakraborty, said they had spoken to clinical behavorial psychologists, gaurdians of children, besides delving into related articles and news reports.
There had also been reports of tragic deaths due to such addiction and even incidents of suicide for playing violent online games.
"We thought that as parents of our boy child, this topical and important issue confronting the present day society should come up in our film" she said.
The film revolves round a successful working couple whose lives plunge into turmoil due to their child's addiction to mobile games.
"Now that the pandemic has eased a bit, it is for every parent to see to it that their children, including teenagers don't get addicted to mobiles and monitor what they are doing," Chakraborty, also TMC lawmaker, said.
Subhashree said it will be possible if adults curtail their mobile usage time whenever possible, which will make their children follow suit.
Asked about the rather unusual naming of the film and if the title has any resonance with the mobile game pubg, its other lead actor Parambrata Chatterjee said it was possible since the film focuses on the issue of mobile gaming.
The script for the film was jointly developed with Padmanabha Dasgupta and will be released on June 3.
(This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)