Unit 1 · Topic 07 · Digital Safety and Citizenship
The ball came high and slow, straight to Anaya. An easy catch.
She blinked, saw two balls instead of one, and it dropped between her hands.
Her team lost by four runs.
Anaya was the best fielder in Class 4-B. Everyone said so.
On Friday night she found a channel full of cricket bloopers. One video ended, and the next started by itself. She watched one more. Then one more. When she looked up, the clock said 11:40 pm. It had felt like ten minutes.
Saturday was the inter-house match. Anaya yawned through breakfast. She yawned in the auto. Then came that easy catch.
On Monday she told Kabir, expecting something annoying.
"How long did you watch?" he asked.
"I don't know. That's the problem."
Ms. Rao heard them. She gave no speech about screens. She opened a blank page on Pixel, the lab's grumpy old desktop, and typed two headings.
"Write what the screen gave you," she said. "Then write what it took."
Gave: a lot of laughing, one brilliant catch she wanted to copy, a video sent to her cousin in Pune. Took: three hours, a night's sleep, one catch, four runs.
"So videos are bad," said Anaya.
"Did I say that?" said Ms. Rao. "You chose the first video. Autoplay chose the other forty."
Kabir tried something that evening. He set a timer for twenty minutes before opening the app. When it rang he stood up and drank water.
Anaya switched autoplay off. She still watched bloopers — at 6 pm instead of 11 pm.
Next Saturday she took two catches. Pixel's fan groaned loudly, which is as close as Pixel gets to clapping.
Media balance means you decide three things about screens: how much, what kind, and when. Anaya decided the first video. Autoplay decided the rest.
Wellbeing is how your body and mind actually feel — sleep, energy, mood, eyes. Screens are not the enemy. Anaya's videos gave her real things she enjoyed. But time is like pocket money: an hour spent here cannot be spent again.
So the useful question is never "are screens good or bad?" It is: did I choose this, or did the app choose for me — and what did this hour cost?
Pick one screen thing you did yesterday. On paper draw Ms. Rao's two columns: GAVE and TOOK.
Write two items under each, and guess how long it lasted. Check the app's own history if you can.
Now write one sentence: will you change the amount, the kind, or the time of day?
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