Social networks have forcefully entered our lives, radically changing the daily life of anyone who has the opportunity to connect to the Internet. The so-called social networks have transformed, among other things, information and communication, including that between school and family, as demonstrated by the pervasiveness of whatsapp class chats, an instant messaging system increasingly similar to an interaction circuit. social, which promotes and guides institutional decision-making processes.
Children and smartphone addiction, strict rules are useless
by Cinzia Lucchelli
April 15, 2022
The role of social media
Although the repercussions of this diffusion are evident on all segments of the population, the scientific debate often focuses on the relationship entertained by girls and boys with social media. If it is fairly obvious that the use of social networks should be banned or in any case limited in childhood, and if it is known that the adult population makes unlimited use of them, often reckless and exaggerated, instead the relationship between adolescent well-being / malaise and use of social networks is more controversial.
The connection between social media and satisfaction with one’s life
A recent and massive survey of the population of the United Kingdom (Amy Orben and collaborators, 2022) analyzed a collection of data concerning about 84,000 citizens between the ages of 10 and 80, including those relating to 17,409 young people aged between between 10 and 21 years. The research sought a connection between the estimated use of social media and the perception of satisfaction with one’s life, measured through questions regarding physical appearance, family, friendships and school. Analyzes of the data highlighted key periods, in adolescence, in which the use of social networks is associated with a decrease in satisfaction with life in the following 12 months.
The ages of girls and boys make a difference
In particular, in girls between 11 and 13 years of age, the use of social networks is associated with a lower satisfaction with life in the following year. As for the boys, however, this same association occurs later, between the ages of 14 and 15.
Differences in age and gender suggest that sensitivity to social media use may be linked to later brain and puberty developments in males than females. Additionally, increased social media usage is associated with lower life satisfaction at 19 for both genders.
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However, it is the researchers themselves who underline how it is necessary to deepen these results through other researches and how the understanding of the relationship between life satisfaction and the use of social media in adolescence must take into account many other variables, especially in consideration of vulnerability, mobility and fluidity of this phase of the life cycle.
The prudence of the most serious researchers, however, together with the evident difficulty today in identifying the variables to measure internet addiction, should lead parents, teachers and educators to accept the fact that adolescent growth can only happen through social experiences. on the Internet.
The responsibilities of adults
It was adults, and not adolescents, let us remember, who built a relational universe where it is no longer possible to make the ancient distinction between real life and virtual life, now indissolubly intertwined, to the point of constituting a form of hybrid existence in which one lives. always in touch even when alone.
As for the use of parent control on children’s devices, the indications also coming from some experts who invite detoxification from social networks, for a few days or at least at dinner time, do nothing but activate mothers and fathers in little initiatives. perspective with respect to the adolescent population segment. These are interventions that would like to be authoritative and that, in reality, testify to all the fragility of adults unable to accept the consequences of the models of identification they have proposed since the birth of their children and of the hyper-connectedness of today’s society.
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by Irma D’Aria
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The specific meaning of using the Internet
Teenagers need parents who are able to take an interest in what happens to their children when they surf the internet, able to ask them, every night, “how’s the internet?”, Rather than private detectives on a secret mission on their children’s smartphone. inevitably destined to make decisions and choices, even online today, out of the gaze of mum and dad. The assumption of adult responsibility today passes through the ability to grasp the specific meaning of the use of the internet in the growth path of every adolescent, not in the standardized application of privative and limiting formulas, more suitable for containing one’s anguish than for supporting raising children.
Parents, go online to protect your children from the dark side of social media
by Giuseppe Lavenia
November 21, 2021
Becoming a new subject is the inescapable task of the adolescent who must free himself from the image of the child he once was, in order to make room for the new nascent self. Recognition and attunement are the fundamental ingredients that parents can put in place to support their children in this difficult undertaking. Controlling and limiting teenagers is not enough, both in real life and in virtual life.
* Matteo Lancini is a psychologist and psychotherapist, President of the “Minotauro” Foundation in Milan. Lecturer at the Psychology Department of the Milano-Bicocca University