TOWhat a game! Video games today are so immersive that affect the identity of those who play it, sometimes even parallel to what is experienced on the physical plane. The effects of these dynamics on the psychology of children can influence their growth path, also in terms of health.
Do video games really stimulate the brain?
The fact that i video games stimulate the brain it cannot be used as a justification for leaving our children hours and hours in front of the consoles. Especially when it is a cliché, rather than a scientific postulate. «In adolescence and until about 24 years of age the maturation of the prefrontal cortex is not complete.
This is the part of the brain linked to cognitive processes, which facilitate coordination, monitoring of thoughts and actions to complete various complex tasks.” Stefania Manetti, President of the Cultural Association of Pediatricians, explains that that ability to “count to 3”, so often mentioned by parents, does not develop before a certain age and, above all, is certainly not fueled by experience with video games.
Game and video games, there is a difference
«If adolescents are more impulsive, reactive, emotional – continues Stefania Manetti – it is because the so-called hot cognition, linked to emotion, develops earlier in our brain». This is why, as in all things, theexcessive use of video games can cause disorders. In reality, video games have become a comfort zone for hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents, increasingly distant from their parents, yet just a few meters away from them, locked in their bedrooms.
The gameborn to learn and aggregate, has over time taken on the contours ofescape from an oppressive realityin the logic of divertissement described by the French thinker Pascal.
Videogames and isolation: a contemporary phenomenon
Since the 2000s, for many, too many kids, the gaming has even become synonymous with isolation. A paradox which, according to the experts at the Carolina Foundation, can be temporary or become a real social retreat. In both cases it is not a choice, but a defense against anguish. Just as Pascal writes, it’s a shame that in the seventeenth century there wasn’t even electricity, let alone the PlayStation! Behind a compulsive gamer there is much more than the simple pleasure of playing, but rather the difficulty of finding other ways to deal with a need, a lack that invades him. A sort of self-therapy which, according to experts, can lead to addiction.
Listening is the connection that matters most
To get out of it, willpower is not enough: you need to feel listened to and understood in your pain. The kids ask to have someone who stays with them, where they are and who can represent an alternative “cure”. The reality is that we don’t need WiFi, Bluetooth or 5G to connect with our children. The most important “connection” is that of listening.
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 national and international activities 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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