The global pandemic which resulted in one of the largest lockdowns around the world, has had more adverse effects that one actually thought. As the nation-wide lockdown forced multiple couples in close proximity to each other, while others were forced apart, these two differing situations has had a complicated impact on both types of couples and a lot of these impacts involved OTTs.
As the lockdown forced certain sets of couples together, multiple issues were found to have played a factor in an increase in domestic violence and marital issues when compared to last year. Firstly, the pandemic and resulting lockdown led to the dismissal of multiple workers (or furloughed) which caused a lot of tensions to build at home. In some cases, resentment towards their partner could be found as he/ she would become the sole breadwinner during that difficult time.
Secondly, due to work-from-home or no-work, OTTs became a “primary staple” for multiple couples and families. According to studies, digital screen consumption has had an adverse effect on couples who were in close proximity with each other. The problems found were usually simple cases of overlap and/ or other minor issues which were simple in hindsight, but enough of these minor inconveniences compounded and forced multiple couples to break apart. But the biggest OTT issues were caused within families that had young children. Parents were frequently at odds with each other and their children over various issues pertaining to OTTs such as the content they were viewing, the amount of time spent watching certain content, watching content together as a family, etc.
But in the cases of couples that were forced to stay apart, OTTs such as Netflix allowed couples to watch shows together as a way to bond with one another even while they were far from each other. Some third-party apps such as Zoom and Discord could be used for sharing screens as well. Of course, there were multiple other issues involved with couples who were forced to stay away from each other, but OTT’s roles in that were slim in that regard.
So, ironically, most of the couples that were forced to stay apart, were actually brought closer together thanks to these OTTs, while the opposite happened for couples who were staying with each other. Now of course, not all couples faced these aforementioned issues but we did see an increase in Abhayam 181 calls in 2020 – an 18% rise from 2019, with 44 percent of these calls being made were for domestic violence.
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