Parents have the task of deciding the educational project that concerns their children, making precise choices also with respect to the use of technologies
After giving indications onuse of technology From children up to 6 years, and after illustrating how to continue with those between 6 and 12 years, it is time to face the speech regarding the age group that goes from 12 years up. At this point it is assumed that rules have already established and that these rules are respected. It is time to introduce new and more appropriate to the development phase that begins towards this age.
Dependence on technology
It looks like an obviousness, but The reduction of the hours of sleep in children and pre -adolescents is now an alarming factwith heavy repercussions on school performance. All neurosciences give clear indications on the importance of sleep precisely to reduce the amount of material that accumulates during the day, which risks clogging the lives of children and young people: sleeping is essential. I met a boy who claimed to have 1,800 friends on Facebook, with whom he interacted mostly at night, and who clearly went very badly at school.
Some behaviors related to a Compulsive use of digital They must be adjusted, under penalty of risk of incurring even more serious problems. The nicknamed Japanese teenagers are an example hikikomoriwhich develop a serious form of digital dependence that leads them to isolate themselves more and more on the real world to lock themselves in virtual spaces. Because the digital dependinglet’s not forget: attention must be paid to the signals, which can also appear in childhood, and who reveal a sort of abstinence crisis: the child who cries desperately if he does not watch the TV before going to school, the pre -adolescent who can become violent if you deny access to the video game.
The age of autonomy
Then there is the theme of the reality of social interactions: pre -adolescence and adolescence are a fundamental age to learn to get to know each other and accept themselvesputting their resources to good use and defining one’s own self independently with respect to the reference figures. This process of identification needs a concrete and experiential interaction with others, while today the boys and girls tend to be increasingly tuned to the machines and less on people and themselves than it happened in the past. It is the real interaction that shapes our neuronal circuits and enriches our personality. Type by interacting with a screen makes the keyboard skilled, but often prevents us from acquiring those skills of recognition and reading of non -verbal and emotion which are an essential element of human communication from which it cannot be ignored.
We cannot leave the growth of our children in the hands of marketing and the trends of technological development. It is necessary to take educational positions: Better to make a wrong decision than deciding anything by leaving the children orphans, in anxiety of having to decide on their own issues not adequate to their skills. Moms and dads must ask and discuss together on the educational project that they have in their heads for their children: what people want become.
We let our children struggle and earn in trust and respect the possibility of accessing powerful toolscertainly interesting, but not always adequate. Theirs is a creative effort that allows you to meet in others both the limits necessary to grow, and those mimetic processes that allow us to recognize in otherness what we ourselves are. A trip to a foreign city, a real encounter with a different person, a day spent in the woods with friends, are not the same if you experience virtually.
It does not make sense to oppose the digital technologyto cell phones and technological innovations. It makes sense, and it is essential, to offer children the bank of our educational guidelines, as parents and as people attentive to the future.
The myth of multitasking
By multitasking we mean the particular predisposition of the so -called digital natives to the realization of several activities simultaneously, including technological ones. They study, listen to music, chat on the smartphone, type on the keyboard. Of small genes. Yet, even on this front, it was scientifically demonstrated that Contemporaneity is not a guarantee of quality or efficiency at all. And the school performance of children and Italian teenagers is proof of this. Digital technological displays create very accentuated interference on the concentration capacity of children who, around 7 years old, is about 15 minutes. But this ability is like a muscle, it must be trained and any element of distraction, in particular in this phase of life, produces very pervasive effects.
