The addiction is clear. Sixty percent of young people, between the ages of 11 and 17, check their phones as soon as they wake up and before bed. And they lose nearly seven hours of sleep a week. Symptoms of electronic device addiction
How do you recognize internet addiction? There are some unmistakable symptoms, from mental fatigue to irritability, that indicate the risk of slipping into the gray area of internet addiction. Emails included. Take it as an impression or even as the result of what a part of the Non sprecare community is reporting to us, but the faint (for now) change It's very interesting, even if it's still under the radar: the young they start to take some distance from smartphoneSome small signs of countermeasures are increasing, such as talking less on the cell phone and avoiding rapid-fire calls and communications of any kind. And all of this gives us hope for a more sustainable future, which also means a world where technology doesn't bring humanity to its knees and enslave us.
The starting point, as far as young and very young peopleWe all know it, parents and grandparents, very well. Let's not waste time having senseless debates and let's trust, for example, some data provided by Italian Society of Pediatrics. 85 percent of young Italians, between 11 and 17 years old, use smartphones every day. And the 60 percent Of them, they check it as soon as they wake up and before going to sleep. One of the results of this widespread compulsion is a loss of almost seven hours of sleep per week among young people, and the risk of smartphone addiction has tripled among girls. Need we add anything else to conclude that we're facing a real emergency? Are we exaggerating if, while acknowledging the essential nature of the device and the fact that young people and the very young cannot do without it, we rebel—yes, you read that right: we don't accept this slavery?
Rather, as a site dedicated to lifestyle and sustainability, what we want to share and what we ask you to think about together as a Non sprecare community (in this case, health and life, but also time and natural beauty) is another element, which goes beyond denouncing and acknowledging the widespread pathology. Namely: what can we do to contain it?. Everyone, every day.
And here we are helped by the Italian Society of Pediatrics, with two lights that it turns on and that we point out to you. The first: the simple gestures, common sense, to reduce cell phone use. Music to the ears of Non sprecare, since we talk about it often, starting from the assumption that young people aren't raised, especially at home, by yelling, but rather by discussing, reasoning with open minds and without simply chasing prohibitions and prescriptions, and by respecting roles. Small gestures like these are enough: no smartphones or tablets at the table or during a conversation. Never at night. Never before falling asleepNever when crossing a crosswalk. Never when driving a car or a motorcycle. Do these seem like exercises as hard as spoonfuls of castor oil? Rather, parents and grandparents should set a good example, and not be the first to be a geek in the family. Same goes for school.It's one thing to give technology the space it deserves and is useful for everyone; it's another thing entirely to find ways to avoid exaggeration and eliminate any teaching tool that isn't a technological device, one of our electronic prosthetics.
SYMPTOMS
Exaggerations—and here we must trust the Italian Society of Pediatrics—produce very obvious symptoms of a pathology equivalent to smartphone and tablet addiction, and identifying them is already a significant achievement. The most serious and obvious symptoms are, in order: short temper, inability to detach oneself from the appliance, excessive use of any technological toolSpeaking of schools, it is precisely from this universe that other signals arrive that help us hope for the future, and help us understand why it is precisely they, the young people, who are starting to react.
From the latest OECD-PISA test, we are talking about the most detailed picture of schools in the world and in particular in wealthy countries, like Italy, a figure emerges that I find disconcerting: Italian students they are connected all day and use the web and the computer half an hour more than average of their peers in the world. Do you understand what kind of record we've achieved? That of compulsive and wasteful computer geeks. The OECD analysis links other factors to this result: Italian kids are very anxious, mama's boys, and one in seven are completely dissatisfied with their studies, they don't love them, preferring to tinkerI repeat: one in seven, whereas, just to give a comparison, students dissatisfied with school (and here we're not talking so much about the quality of teaching or the institutions, but rather about their desire to study) in other countries, such as Northern Europe, don't exceed the entirely normal threshold of 5 percent. Test anxiety affects two out of three Italian students, three times as many as their European peers. So we're an anomaly in the European Union, and beyond.
As I was saying, this is just the latest round of bad news about the technology abuse that young Italians have now turned into a way of life. Wrong, very wrong. Do you want more, if this isn't enough, of shocking data? Every minute we send out something like 100 tweets and 700 page updates. FacebookWe have reduced the pleasure of a selfie to a narcissistic and conformist fashion, taking this type of image in the most inappropriate places and at the most inappropriate times, even when a train passes by that threatens to overwhelm us, to the point of forcing the mayor of a place of pain, the municipality of Amateur battered by the earthquake, to launch an appeal: No more selfies, please.
Or I could tell you about how we have now given up on cultivating a national language, with the relative property of languageI've already described the Censis analysis, which captured the "difficulty" of Italian and its replacement, especially among young people, with the language typical of social media, violence, insults, grammatical errors, and simplification at all costs. And just as the national language, a key to the people's identity, has deteriorated, so too has Italian students' ability to concentrate.
ABUSE OF TECHNOLOGIES BY YOUNG PEOPLE
I am not and I do not want to be a member of the catastrophist party, but the time has come to make a serious reflection on the excess of technology and the web to the detriment of new generations, without, of course, denying the full potential and magnificent virtue of this resource, which has become essential to our lives. I say this with great conviction: we must not give up on progress without responsibilityWe must not bow our heads to the idea that the world is like this, and that our children, our grandchildren, our kids, must go on like this, and even worse, like so many sheep. There also exists, and we have talked about it for working people, a right to disconnect, a light, autonomous and non-constraining possibility of a technological diet. There are a thousand ways, a thousand possibilities, which evoke for example the return to conversation, to the pleasure of being together, to enjoying life and nature, to the simplest gestures of human relationships (the kisses(smiles, caresses, physical contact) to reduce the risk of technological waste. Explore them, seek them out, and put them into practice—it's up to us, parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren. Perhaps together. But let's do it, anyway, and before it's too late.
Internet addiction is recognized by some very obvious symptoms, especially among young people: easy irritability, a desire for solitude, mental fatigue, and apathy. Internet addiction It should never be underestimated and should be treated as a real pathology.
HOW TO CURE MOBILE PHONE ADDICTION
Cell phone addiction is curable, like all forms of addiction, from alcohol to drugs, to ludopathyThe important thing, once the condition has been identified (if necessary, with the help of a doctor), is to gradually free yourself from smartphone obsessions. For example, don't use it in the evening after returning home. And turn off notifications when they're not essential.About Find some helpful tips for addressing the right treatments to overcome cell phone addiction.
CENTERS FOR TREATMENT OF INTERNET ADDICTION
According to a recent census by the National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore della Sanità), there are 102 centers for treating Internet addiction in Italy. They are located throughout the country (the complete map is available on the National Institute of Health's website).eof Health), with a clear prevalence in the Northern regions, where 65 percent of the services offered are concentrated, compared to only 9 percent in the Southern regions. The majority of users are male (75 percent), aged between 15 and 18.
SOME NICE ALTERNATIVES TO THE COMPUTER AND THE INTERNET:
