TO starting from early childhood, trusting in smartphones for children to manage a critical moment experienced is a strong temptation. Lights, sounds, colors, all at your fingertips. Ditties and cartoons without limits almost always work as “weapon of mass distraction”. A wild card.
We think we can overcome crying fits, tantrums or accompany sleep and meals simply by handing the smartphone to children, even very young ones.
Smartphone for children, it is not a babysitter or a digital pacifier
A free and always available babysitter, and yet… not all that sails is gold. The price for this tranquility, as ephemeral as it is artificial, risks being very high. And it’s mostly the little ones who pay for it.
The risks increase the earlier the exposure
«On a scientific level we know with certainty that the earlier the exposure, the greater the risk to neurodevelopment. The first thousand days of a child’s life, starting from when it is in the mother’s belly, are the period of greatest brain plasticity”, explains Stefania Manetti, President of the Cultural Association of Paediatricians. Which underlines, on the contrary, the benefit of positive experiences ininteraction with parents for the neuronal connections of newborns, even from an emotional point of view. «A massage, just mentioned singing, a simple improvised game can promote the ability to self-regulate one’s emotions which, however, is inhibited during the use of digital devices to calm children», adds Stefania Manetti.
How to teach children to self-regulate emotions
The major international pediatric societies, starting with the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as the WHO, suggest not using digital devices in relationships with children under 2 years of age. Yet there are times when what experts strongly advise against seems like the only solution that works.
«If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be smarter, read more fairy tales.” This famous phrase by Albert Einstein responds, not without irony, to the need to develop authentic relationships with the child. So what do you do to even be able to taste the dish ordered at the restaurant? Or to sleep at least a few hours before going to work?
To help parents, community education
Carolina Foundation believes in rediscovery of that community education which, in the last 15 years, has given way to the logic of communities. Advice, comparisons and consistent behaviors are fundamental within the people and contexts that determine the child’s daily life. Build a solid educational environment contributes to rediscovering the centrality of our children’s health, also from a digital point of view. A goal perhaps less immediate, but certainly more important than a pizza or a TV series.
There Carolina Foundationborn in memory of the fourteen-year-old Carolina Picchio (the first known Italian victim of cyberbullying in Italy), is today committed to the all-round protection of minors online, with activities at national and international level of awareness-raising, training, advocacy, research and emergency response. From the Research sector, the importance of information on digital and children for caring for the health of one’s children emerged as a priority. Not only with reference to adolescents, but also to protect babies with respect to the correct and conscious use of device, which have now entered everyone’s daily life. Carolina Foundation has created various awareness and information tools for parents, all accessible from the site Minorionline.com.
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