— Yogi Kochhar is the Dharamshala-based former Director of Microsoft India and currently founder of YOL Happiness Foundation Social and emotional learning is being removed from the human psyche as minds are being colonised by social media. Minds worldwide are being consumed in short 2-3 second bursts The country’s politicians and leaders, especially of the ruling party in Delhi proclaim India’s demographic dividend — the world’s largest population of children and youth estimated at 500 million — from the roof tops and every available national and international platform. But encashing this dividend is conditional upon this huge mass of young people being well-educated, innovative and productive. Are our educationists — policy formulators, professors and teachers aware of this? Let’s peel the rhetoric. The stark reality is that India with population that’s 4x of US has a GDP 15 percent of the US. It has to rattle a thinking mind as to how with hands and minds that are 4x of the US, we produce a GDP 1/8th the US . The checksum is simple: In India, we have lost our minds semantically and literally, and are continuing to lose them. Following the advent of social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram,, Tik-Tok, Snapchat, and a host of other apps — an apocalypse in the form of AI (artificial intelligence) is here and with the impact of a tsunami, is about to erode all traditional ways of ‘knowing and doing’ education. An urgent response is required. How did this happen? What’s to be done? To chart a response – a course of action — we first have to understand the causes of our present predicament. Over a decade and a half ago, I was member of a cohort of best American tech companies engaged in deep discussion with eminent psychologists from Yale University. The top item on the agenda was how to increase the market share of participating companies. As the sun was setting and the sundowners were rolled out, a new paradigm emerged. A far more durable and profitable alternative to increasing market share, is to increase the mind share of customers. The mobile phone was identified as the tool kit to conquer minds worldwide. With a market cap of $1 trillion contributed by 25 billion users worldwide, every user is worth $400 to Facebook. As schools conveniently turn a Nelson’s eye, students are spending an average of six hours daily scrolling, passively viewing videos, short reels and posts on Facebook and other social media apps, and keep flipping using the neuroplastic channels of the mind. This is further broken up in slices or neural synapses of 2-3 seconds per view. Even for institutions that don’t permit phones on campus, the moment students leave their campuses they get hooked to their mobile phones. With minds engaged in neural switching every 2-3 seconds, IQ (intelligence quotient) is reduced to pattern recognition and EQ (emotional quotient) is replaced by emoticons. The use of filters to touch up pictures and create ‘selfies’ ushers in…
