He is 14 years old, he hasn’t been to school for two years. He doesn’t want to leave home, he spends his days hooked on video games. At the age of 10 he began his addiction, but at 12 he was irremediable. Today, he barely leaves his room. Parents, downcast, are completely collapsed. This family exists, it is a real case that is attended by the SPOTT unit, which can be useful to understand the adolescent ‘boom’ of addiction to screens and marijuana among minors. “There is always something behind that has been broken: bullying at school, poor accompaniment in the classroom, mental health disorders that have not been diagnosed or a bad relationship with the family,” explains psychologist Anna Siso.
The story hidden by this teenager, whom we will call Alfons to preserve his identity, responds to a pattern of social abandonment in which very few have stopped to think and which, experts explain, is very common. Alfons has, since childhood, an autistic disorder. “I went to a primary school where I had support in the classroom through a ‘vetlladora’, at school I was listened to, cared for, the center worked by projects, very innovative, I was one of the class and I had friends there,” he explains. his psychologist, Joan Bosch. But the boy had to change his home and, in turn, his school. “There he no longer had reinforcement, the school was much more normalized, he began to get bad grades and the rest of the class picked on him,” continues the professional who attends him.
digital friends
“It’s a common pattern: children with socialization problems look for friends through networks. It is common, for example, that they have some type of autistic disorder and others call them ‘rare’. They hide behind the computer where, they say, they have dozens of digital friends. They live it as such and share all their problems with them, “explains Siso. It is a trend, that of digital friendship, which is already detected in the Zeta generation or even younger. “It reminds me of when people wrote to each other… There are even couples who have never touched or smelled each other”, continues the psychologist. “The problem with these digital friendships is when there are no others, when there are no other flesh and blood friends. If they are complementary, fine. But if you only have friends online, it’s an alarm signal,” explains social worker Noelia Rosés.
The case of Alfons, moreover, cries out to heaven for the delay in detection. “How can it be that a child is two years without going to school and an alarm signal is not activated before?”, Rosés wondered as soon as he met the teenager. “We have a problem of lack of detection, addiction to screens or marijuana in young people is normalizing and this takes a long time to sound the first voices of alarm to be able to act before. Then there is the need for all the services that care for the family, go at one: sometimes there is a lot of care but families get saturated and we lose them,” explains Gemma García, head of treatment at the center.
Become the ‘bad guy’
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Then there is the reality of addiction to marijuana joints or hashish. Last year this center treated almost 200 cases, and according to the ESTUDES-2021 survey, 22% of Spaniards between 14 and 18 years old smoke joints. Risk consumption has risen two points, standing at 17.8%. “In the case of more rebellious, hyperactive children who have a harder time being at home, they leave the house and become the bad ‘bad guy’. They smoke joints and then start dealing,” notes the psychologist Siso. “Instead of being the fool who gets laughed at, he sticks a joint between his lips and they become the bad guys in the class so they don’t feel left out,” Bosch continues.
Basically, the experts stress that the most important thing is to treat adolescents, love them and know how to listen to them. “If they feel that they are interrupting and disturbing at home, that they are useless at school… They are building their identity! They decide to isolate themselves,” summarizes Rosés. “Adolescents project themselves onto the adults around them. There are parents who insult their children, who do not recognize them, who come home from work devastated and do not want to know anything about them or fight. Limits are very important, but they do not enter bravely, they enter with affection,” warns Siso.