Gjudgments, expectations, pressures and stress they are the ideal terrain for the development of states of anxiety that can affect our days and our self-esteem. In this condition, the web can be an anchor, a refuge.
If the web for young people is a refuge against anxiety and loneliness
This applies to adults, especially to children and pre-adolescents, for whom this particular emotional state can represent a boulder in their growth path.
There are more and more children between the ages of 11 and 17 who feel anxiety and a growing malaise that makes them feel inadequate, lost and, fundamentally, alone.
A loneliness that distances them from authentic relationships, which it pushes them more and more towards those artificial emotions typical of the online world. Chat, streaming content, video games, social networks they can cover over a third of our children’s day.
On the internet the anxiety and anguish of real everyday life are canceled out
The digital dimension can become a refuge for them, a place to cancel all the misunderstandings, anxiety and anguish that accompany the daily relationship with parents, educators and teachers. Adults who, armed with good intentions, encourage children to work hard to learn, obtain results and pass those exams which, however, never end.
Few, however, are able to tune into the suffering of younger people, addressing the person rather than the student or child. Perhaps by picking up those signals that kids send through obvious attitudes and conduct.
The smartphone, a comfort zone
The smartphone always in hand, the gaze bent on the screen and few words, fewer and fewer: always the same. Sometimes they are there, next to us, in the classroom or in the living room at home, at the restaurant or on holiday, but in reality they are far away, in that tree house which for many of them represents the web. A comfort zone which, in the long run, can turn out to be an island of Circe.
In this journey to discover parenting in a hyper-connected society, also thanks to the irony of the cartoons, we recalled the importance of connecting with our children. You don’t need a modem, rather than Wi-Fi you need to listen to their emotions, establish contact, become a point of reference again.
Then we will understand that running away from situations that hurt is an understandable defense, which we cannot judge as a sign of weakness. That it is not enough to give advice, give orders or assign tasks, but to be with them, giving attention and care.
All episodes of the “Parents Online” column are available on Minorionline.com, the digital wellbeing portal created by the Carolina Foundation.
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 devicewhich have now entered everyone’s daily life.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED