I remember the first time I noticed it was no longer just entertainment.

My ten-year-old niece sat beside me, face illuminated by the cold blue light of her phone, fingers moving in reflexive precision across TikTok’s endless stream. She laughed. She gasped. She scrolled. Outside, the afternoon drifted by unnoticed. What looked like harmless fun felt almost magical, until I realized she had been there for hours.

What I was witnessing was not childhood play. It was a transaction.

In 2020, screens became our lifeline. Locked indoors by a pandemic, we turned to digital platforms for schooling, connection, distraction, survival. But five years later, that lifeline has hardened into something else: an extraction system. Indonesia’s 30 million children aged 8 to 17 are now immersed in a digital ecosystem engineered not merely to entertain, but to capture, retain, and monetize attention with ruthless efficiency.

TikTok. YouTube. Roblox. Tocaboca. These are not neutral tools. They are infrastructure powered by electricity, fuelled by fossil energy, optimized for addiction.

Let’s begin with something unfashionable: numbers.

In 2020, the average Indonesian child spent about two hours a day on these platforms, consuming roughly 0.023 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity daily. By 2025, that figure has doubled to four hours and 0.039 kWh per child. At Indonesia’s standard household tariff, that translates into Rp 609 billion annually to power children’s screen time alone. Enough electricity to supply roughly 300,000 homes.

And between 20 and 30 percent of that consumption is pure waste devices left idling, videos autoplaying, apps running invisibly in the background. Over five years, that inefficiency has quietly drained between Rp 610 billion and Rp 910 billion from Indonesian households.

That money could have funded tens of millions of nutritious meals.

Instead, it fuels algorithms.

The environmental arithmetic is even more uncomfortable. Indonesia’s electricity grid still depends on coal and gas for roughly two-thirds of its supply. Every swipe, every autoplayed video, every high-definition stream carries a carbon cost. By 2025, children’s digital activity alone generates between 450,000 and 750,000 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent annually.

We are a nation that has pledged net-zero emissions by 2060. Yet we rarely acknowledge the carbon embedded in our digital habits, particularly those of our youngest citizens.

The irony borders on tragic. The same children glued to their screens today will inherit the floods engulfing Jakarta, the heatwaves scorching Sumatra, and the food instability threatening Java. They will live with the consequences of a climate crisis intensified by systems they never consciously chose to support.

And then there is hunger.

Indonesia’s Makan Bergizi Gratis (MBG) programme aims to combat child malnutrition beginning in 2025. One meal costs Rp 17,500. The annual electricity bill for children’s digital use in 2025 alone could finance nearly 35 million meals. The wasted idle consumption each year could feed tens of thousands of children.

We are, quite literally, feeding algorithms while children go hungry.

Meanwhile, tech platforms harvest enormous profits from this attention economy between Rp 1.5 trillion and Rp 2.6 trillion annually from Indonesian child users through advertising and in-app spending. This is not accidental. These systems are designed for compulsion. Infinite scroll is not a feature; it is a behavioural trap. Autoplay is not convenience; it is retention engineering.

To be clear, this is not an argument against technology. YouTube can educate. Roblox can nurture creativity. Digital literacy is indispensable in a modern economy. But when design prioritizes addiction over efficiency, and profit over planetary stability, we have crossed from innovation into exploitation.

The solution is not prohibition. It is accountability.

Platforms must decarbonize their infrastructure and optimize for energy efficiency rather than engagement maximization. Governments should consider digital energy taxation mechanisms that redirect a portion of attention-driven revenue toward nutrition and climate adaptation. Parents and schools must teach digital discipline alongside digital literacy.

Most importantly, we must abandon the comforting myth that the digital world is weightless. It is not virtual in its consequences. It consumes coal. It emits carbon. It shifts wealth. It shapes habits.

The glow from our children’s screens may look harmless. But it is powered by extractive economics and fossil energy. It reflects a deeper question about what we value as a society: viral trends or viable futures.

We cannot rewind to 2020. But we can decide what 2030 will look like.

Will we continue to scroll while the climate warms and children remain undernourished? Or will we redesign the systems that profit from their attention and redirect that power toward something more humane?

The choice is not technological. It is moral.

And it is ours.

By : La Mema Parandy*

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