THEIn Italy, almost 500,000 children between the ages of 11 and 17 may be addicted to video games, while almost 100,000 have characteristics compatible with the presence of an addiction to social media. Alarming data, which emerge from a recent study by the Istituto Superiore della Sanità according to which the phenomenon of social isolation (known as Hikikomori in its extreme clinical manifestation) concerns 1.8% of middle school students and 1. 6% of those in high school.
Prevent isolation and web addiction with board games
Preventing these phenomena of social isolation in children and teenagers through board games, intended as a means of socialization is the goal of Play Methe Board Game Festival, which is back on stage after the forced postponement of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 editions. The initiative, which has just ended, which was aimed at primary and lower secondary school students in Milan and its province, was promoted by DeMarchi Foundation and developed in coordination with the Ministry of Education and Merit and the Regional Scholastic Office for Lombardy-Ambito Territoriale of Milan. So many names of the show like Mara MaionchiLand Donatella, Faso degli Elio e le Storie Tese who took part in the festival.
The founding idea of the event is that shared and participated board games can prevent some of the phenomena of social isolation that affect young people today.
Hikikomori, Neet, Freeter, Internet Addiction Disorder: different forms of a dramatic phenomenon
Based on the characteristic of the phenomenon that predominates, contemporary psychiatric nosography has defined this phenomenon in various ways: Hikikomori, Neet, Freeter, Internet Addiction Disorder. It’s about boys who isolate themselves in their own room and choose a new way of being in the world, in which contact with virtual reality is often privileged and accepted, to the detriment of any form of relationship and activity that presupposes the involvement of the body and an exhibition of oneself outside the confined space of one’s room.
The activities they engage in can be varied, dreading, drawing, writing. But more often they indulge in the Internet and video games.
Technology makes emptiness bearable. And it’s worse
As explained by the G. and D. De Marchi ONLUS Foundation, «Technology it’s a kind of “clumsy therapy” because it does not radicalise the void and makes it bearable by avoiding a fall into a deaf, absolute, crazy solitude. A sort of imaginary membrane between a life and a non-life, in which to hide because neither of the two solutions, life or death, seems possible».
In other words, by means of the internet and video games, the young recluse sinks into the tunnel of solitudewhich becomes chronic. The dramatic character of his own imprisonment fades into a relationship with the other that is surrogate and neither real nor healthy.
The old (and new) board games, e the project Play MeI’m stnoises to break the chain of silence.
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