Some time ago, I saw a boy from my neighborhood. At the age of twelve or thirteen, his face was so bright that anyone who looked at him would smile. Mischievous, sharp, talkative. Whichever street he walked through, you could hear his voice. His mother used to say this boy will make something of himself one day.
Today that same boy is locked inside a dark room. He doesn’t go out, doesn’t meet anyone. Talk to him and he forgets what you said halfway through, his eyes are always red, his face shows nothing. Doctors have started psychological treatment. His family says they don’t understand what happened to him.
I know what happened. A mobile screen came into his hands and he handed his entire life over to it.
And this isn’t just the story of that one boy. My own cousin, a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three. He did his Master’s in Computer Science, came home, and then sat down in front of the mobile screen. He’s been sitting there ever since. All day, all night, nothing but the screen. No awareness of himself, no awareness of his wife, no awareness of his own child. He’s already wearing glasses with a number three prescription, and his body has become so thin it’s painful to look at. This was the same boy who had left home with dreams of becoming something after getting an education, but in front of the mobile screen, all of that stayed behind.
These aren’t distant stories. This is happening in our homes, in our streets, among our own people. We just don’t see it because our own eyes are also glued to the mobile screen.
Habit One: When the First Breath of Morning Belongs to the Mobile Screen
The very first thing that happens when you open your eyes in the morning is checking the mobile screen. Reading this, you might smile because this is your own story. Fajr is forgotten, the cool morning air goes unfelt, the screen just lights up and the day begins. And that beginning ruins the entire day.
Our elders used to say whoever takes control of the morning takes control of their whole life. We give that morning away for free every single day. The time Allah has given us the most precious part of it is these few morning hours yet we sacrifice them for some stranger’s video and pointless news. Then we complain that nothing is happening in our lives.
And it’s not just the morning. The whole day is the same. Picking up the mobile screen again and again for no reason, checking it every few minutes, no notification has come, no work to do, yet the hand reaches for the mobile on its own. This doesn’t stay a habit, it becomes a disease. And a disease can only be treated once it’s first recognized.
But there’s one more thing to say here. I have another cousin who did the same Master’s degree. He didn’t let the mobile screen become his weakness instead he made it his source of income. He works six hours a day, from home, and is grateful to Allah for what he earns. The difference wasn’t in the mobile. The difference was that one let it ride him and the other put it to work for himself.
Habit Two: The Relationships That Are Quietly Dying Because of the Mobile Screen
The mobile screen has pushed us away from our parents and we didn’t even notice when it happened. Everyone is sitting together at home but no one is talking to anyone. The mother asks something and the son says yes or hmm, his eyes on the screen. The father wants to say something, the child has earphones in. That mother who stayed up through the nights raising us, that father who bore his own pain to give us comfort today they sit right in front of us and we’re watching some stranger’s video.
People have started treating this mobile screen as if it is life itself. Sitting with friends mobile. With family mobile. Eating food mobile. Those moments that could have become memories, those conversations that could have deepened relationships all of it is being sacrificed to the screen.
First the conversations become less, then the complaints start, then one day the person sitting right in front of you begins to feel like a stranger. And all of this started with that one habit picking up the mobile screen while sitting with the people we love.
Habit Three: The Dangers Hidden Behind the Mobile Screen That Swallowed Someone’s Entire Life
There was a girl. From a good family, sensible, educated. Her family adored her. When she got a mobile screen, the world opened up new people, new conversations. A boy came along who seemed very understanding, very decent, very loving. For months there were conversations, promises were made, dreams were built.
Then one day, she left with him.
What happened next my hand hesitates even as I write it. That boy sold her to people for whom a human being had no value. That girl who was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister she ended up in a place from which leaving is not easy.
Months later she came back, she did come back but the girl who returned was not the girl who had left. That light was gone from her eyes, that smile was gone from her face. Her mother still cries at night. Her father sits at home in silence. Her younger brother still hasn’t understood what happened to his sister, or why.
This was not a movie story. This happened among us, right before our eyes, and we could do nothing.
Behind the mobile screen, every face is not what it appears to be. But we believe because no one warned us, no one told us who these people are who wear the mask of love and what their real purpose is.
There needs to be conversation in homes. Parents need to sit down and talk openly with their children what are you looking at on the mobile screen, who are you talking to, has anyone said something that felt strange, tell me. If these conversations don’t happen at home, the child will go outside and learn from people who mean them no good.
Habit Four: Staying Up Late with the Mobile Screen and Destroying Life with Your Own Hands
Lying in bed at night watching the mobile screen has now become a routine for our people. One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock. And when you wake up in the morning, the body is exhausted, the mind is heavy, the day is wasted. This goes on for months, for years, and slowly the body becomes hollow.
The sleep cycle gets destroyed. When sleep won’t come you pick up the mobile screen, the screen makes sleep even less likely, and this cycle goes on through the night. Dark circles under the eyes, restlessness in the body, no strength to get up in the morning. People’s mental health problems are growing and no one can figure out where the root of all this is. The root is there in that mobile screen you picked up before going to sleep at night.
And when the heart is sad, when there is some pain, instead of talking to someone close, out comes the mobile screen. An hour passes on the screen and the heart doesn’t feel lighter it feels heavier. Because the cure for pain is not a screen, it’s someone who is yours. And the people who are ours we pushed them away ourselves.
Habit Five: Wasted Time on the Mobile Screen and Lost Dreams
I once knew a boy who used to say he would run his own business one day. He was sharp, he had a way with words, there was a spark in his eyes. Today that same boy spends hours watching TikTok on the mobile screen. Bring up the business and he says I’ll start tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes.
This is what happens. One video after another, and when you finally look up, two hours have gone by. Nothing learned, nothing built, nothing written. Just time gone. And time is the one thing that once gone, never comes back.
The most painful thing is that watching other people’s success on the mobile screen makes a person unhappy with their own life. Their own home feels small, their own salary feels low, their own face feels wrong. This feeling hollows a person out from the inside, slowly, and they don’t even realize when it happened.
That hour you gave to the mobile screen today it was a piece of your own dream that you let go with your own hands.
In the End, Just This
The mobile screen is not something to be thrown away. Let that be clear. The mobile screen is neither an enemy nor a friend in itself it is a tool. And a tool becomes dangerous in the hands of someone who uses it without understanding it.
The people who are earning from the mobile screen, learning from it, connecting with the world through it they look at the same screen you do. The only difference is they decided whether this screen would run their life, or they would run it.
Tonight, before you sleep, put the mobile screen away from yourself plug it in to charge in another room. Tomorrow morning, spend fifteen minutes without the screen. Have your tea, look outside, sit in the quiet. Set aside one time in the day when the mobile screen is completely gone just the family, just conversation, just laughter. These are small habits but they are the decisions that slowly give life back to you.
Talk to your children. Tell them that behind the mobile screen, every face is not what it appears to be. Don’t frighten them make them understand. And before you explain it to them, also ask yourself how much time you yourself are giving to this screen.
Sit with your parents. Today. Right now. Put the mobile screen aside and just look at them. You have no idea how happy they will be.
Life is not behind the mobile screen. The life you are looking for is in the people sitting in front of you, in the eyes of those who are yours, in this moment you are living right now. Put the screen down, look up life is there.
