A dangerous dependence

Teenage ad­dic­tion to tech­nol­ogy, es­pe­cially in­ter­net ap­pli­ca­tions, is a grow­ing con­cern among ex­perts and fam­i­lies alike. It is not a new phe­nom­e­non, it’s been around as long as smart­phones. Yet the con­di­tions caused by the Covid-19 pan­demic have con­sid­er­ably ag­gra­vated this pathol­ogy. Along with the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on the econ­omy and so­ci­ety, the pan­demic has led to an in­crease in ad­dic­tions, in­clud­ing the de­pen­dence of young peo­ple on screens. Most of them have had to do classes from home, study­ing with the same tools that they use for fun: the com­puter, the tablet, and the smart­phone.

Far from di­min­ish­ing the need for con­tact with friends and col­leagues, the lock­down did quite the op­po­site. Face-to-face en­coun­ters, con­tact in the play­ground or in the street, have al­most been re­placed by vir­tual con­tact. Audio mes­sag­ing and video calls have greatly in­creased, on­line games and re­motely shared movie ses­sions are more and more com­mon among young peo­ple. Un­like other ad­dic­tions, this one has a more gen­eral im­pact and cre­ates al­most no bar­ri­ers to ac­cess. That makes it much more threat­en­ing. It also opens the door to fu­ture ad­dic­tions and be­hav­ioural and men­tal health dis­or­ders that could af­fect an en­tire gen­er­a­tion that, in per­haps a mat­ter of just a decade, will have to join the world of work, and to even start run­ning com­pa­nies, busi­nesses and in­sti­tu­tions.

No doubt many of the skills ac­quired as a re­sult of a child­hood spent using tech­nol­ogy will be very nec­es­sary and im­por­tant in the de­vel­op­ment of this work, but they will not have been taught how to avoid the risks. Sadly, the cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is not ori­en­tated to­wards doing this. This is one of the lessons we can learn from the pan­demic, and take the op­por­tu­nity to guide today’s stu­dents into the world of to­mor­row.

So, if you are wor­ried that your teenager, or even you, might be a dig­i­tal ad­dict, then read­ing our fea­tures Liv­ing on­line (pages 14-19) and Hooked on phones (pages 20-23) might help raise your aware­ness about such a wor­ry­ing issue in our so­ci­ety and help focus on new health­ier habits. And maybe help set new rules for 2022! Happy New Year!