Generation of digital orphans: how to know if your child is addicted to technology

Screens occupy more and more time in the lives of adolescents. "Video games and likes on social networks are worse addictive than sugar," explains the director of the Technological Addictions Service of the Community of Madrid, Devi Uranga. Since 2018, the Community of Madrid has been treating adolescents between 12 and 17 years old who make inappropriate, abusive or dependent use of technologies. The number of people receiving therapy at the Center for Technological Addictions has increased exponentially since the start of the pandemic. Technology addictions are characterized by the harmful abuse of screens. A problem on the rise and to highlight

this, Monday, May 17, Internet Day 2021.

"The person no longer uses technologies to relax or have fun, but rather they depend on them to feel good," says the psychologist Ricardo Rodríguez, who is the technical coordinator of the Addiction Intervention Unit (UniAdic).

More information

• Seven tips to prevent your children from having toxic relationships with and through technology

• How to prevent children from becoming addicted to screens

From UniAdic, they explain that this type of addiction is very recent so there are not many studies on the matter. What all addictions do have in common is that they create compulsive behaviors. The first step in knowing if your child is addicted to technology is to see how long he or she is stuck with it. Do you stop interacting with your family or studying because you are glued to the computer? If the answer is yes in both cases, this could be an alarm signal, explains Rodríguez.

As a result of this problem, Albert Gimeno decided to found a non-governmental organization that takes care of the problems associated with the use of the Internet, free of charge, called Parents 2.0. "In 2008, a group of computer scientists realized that many parents exclude themselves from new technologies," says Gimeno. At that time he decided to start giving talks in schools to educate society about the need to put limits on the use of technology. "We teach minors self-protection guidelines in the use of the Internet, to identify the most common conflicts (cyberbullying, sexting, grooming), maintain a healthy digital life and know their rights and duties in the use of Social Networks!" the start of the Padres 2.0 website

The educational talks are also focused on parents who want to learn about new technologies and their problems. "This space is focused on parents who want to know what their children do on the Internet, learn about Social Networks, learn to surf the Internet safely and solve any doubts they have," says Gimeno who thinks that the best parental filter on the Internet to children are their parents.

The internet is still a world very unknown to many. Many times the smallest of the house have more agility diving through the web than the older ones. "The Internet becomes dangerous when you do not have enough maturity to manage what happens to you when you are online, if you are bullied or harassed," explains the ICT teacher, Camino López, who summarizes it in a lack of knowledge of the parents' networks . "They are a generation of digital orphans, children do not have the support they need because their parents did not grow up on the networks," says López, who has seen many cases in his school where minors suffer bullying or sexual cyberbullying and their parents do not they know.

“The idea is that parents have tools to regulate new technologies.

The use of them is neither good nor bad, but they need limits ”, says Uranga.

Some of the limits that they recommend that parents establish are that they do not use mobile phones after 9 p.m., that they do not use mobile phones at lunch or that they are not allowed to play video games without having done their homework.

This dependency occurs when a child spends more than three hours uninterrupted in front of a screen.

"This can have consequences such as children isolating themselves, lowering their school performance or changing their mood," says Rodríguez.

From the center they denounce that an alarm signal for many parents is when they realize that the screen is the only thing that comforts their child.

This is when they decide to seek professional help.

The percentage of young people who abuse new technologies in Spain has increased from 16% to 21% from 2015 to 2017, according to the National Addiction Strategy.

The profile of people who suffer this type of addiction are mostly men who have also suffered bullying, depression or some interparental conflict.

Women also suffer from dependence, but more towards social networks, while in the case of men it is usually associated with video games.

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