After the teacher Daniele Novare and the psychotherapist Alberto Pellai They started the petition to “ensure that none of our boys and girls can own a personal smartphone before the age of 14 and that they cannot have a social media profile before the age of 16 », a petition which brought together more than 50 thousand signed and presented in recent days to the Senate, the subject has become a subject of debate everywhere: on television, inside and outside schools, in classroom discussions, between parents and friends. We spoke with Professor Novara to take stock of the situation. And let’s explain – unequivocally – the damage, the victims and the culprits. Who, this may seem strange to you, are not the parents.
the smartphone because it takes away life, while life is learned by living it
First of all: at what stage is the collection of signatures?
There are more than 50 thousand of us, our petition was a great success. Yesterday, there was a press conference in the Senate, all political groups agree with our idea, legislative initiatives have already been tabled, all that remains is to bring together the different ideas to achieve a goal. Namely: recognition of the right age at which a minor can register on social networks. There is a big problem with age recognition, because in theory in Europe and Italy the limit is set at 16 years, but this does not happen because everything is based on self-certification, which is bypassed.
She says: “Before the age of 14-15, the emotional brain of minors is very vulnerable to dopaminergic engagement. social networks and video games. Can you better explain what is happening in the brain that is so dangerous?
I do it in the simplest way possible: in our brain, there are areas designated, or specialized, for “pleasure”: these are those that promote and record pleasure, the so-called dopaminergic areas. The young child experiences them by playing with others, by running, by eating, by learning, by living his life as a child. The domain of pleasure, for him, is very broad. For the adolescent, this concerns the relationship with companions, the first emotional and sexual relationships; it is a different domain from that of childhood, less linked to play, more to contact. When the smartphone, with all its content, including pornographic sites, replaces “fun”, preventing the child from going to play with classmates or the adolescent from meeting up and socializing with friends, it creates a shame because, by making the growth areas linked to play and socialization disappear, growth also dies out. Isolation results, as has happened in recent years. Which, when you think about it, is paradoxical, because these deviceparticularly the smartphone, have succeeded by promising global connection, a victory over isolation. “Let’s stay connected” were many slogans. The end result is that we face an increasingly isolated generation. We must intervene, the situation is completely out of control and the greatest risk is that the growth of new generations will be compromised.
Have you seen more resistance from parents or children since the petition was launched?
Am I telling you the truth? The real resistance is that of adolescent psychologists, I am sincere and I say it bluntly. They continued undeterred, not seeing the problem and saying that it was good for 12-13 year old boys and girls to spend hours on their smartphones, as a form of freedom, growth, autonomy, without realizing that it was a paradox. By the time they lock themselves in their room and isolate themselves, it’s more self-harm than autonomy. Well, the ignorance of many adolescent psychologists about the serious harmful effects of smartphones leaves me speechless. They are considered experts in the sector, but in reality they too have become infatuated with smartphones and do not realize the damage they have caused.
Today, unlike previous generations, families often both work. There is less time and opportunity to care for (and with) children. The justification of many parents is: “I need the cell phone to check where they are, so as not to leave them alone, it is a necessary tool.” What does he answer?
Just yesterday we were talking about this issue in the Senate and I made it clear that the aim of the initiative promoted by me and Dr. Pellai is to ensure that new generations adequately approach new technologies, without being dominated by they. Different solutions can be found to use them well, but what cannot and should not be done is to leave a smartphone to a 12 year old child freely, without limits, as if it were his personal item. Also because these smartphones are real laptops, not just phones. In just a few seconds, you can land on a pornographic site. So much so that kids almost never answer the phone but say, “I’m going to text or send a voicemail.” This defeats the purpose that could be useful, namely maintaining contact, and we return to the previous discussion: it did not promote contact but isolation. How do you say? “Heterogenesis,” or something that is born for a purpose but then turns against the purpose for which it was born.
Assuming we succeed in banning phones for under-14s, what happens next? Because it’s not like the risks disappear at 14…
Of course, but it goes without saying that if a child up to 14 years old has not had accessibility and confidence, he has already protected himself. Then at 15 we are more mature, there is less risk of brain manipulation. How does an 8-9 year old child, caught up in dopaminergic enthusiasm, control his addiction? I see him with my nephew, sometimes I give him my smartphone and I tell him: “5 minutes and that’s it, otherwise you won’t see him again”; but if I didn’t set this obvious limit for him to get lost, he would spend hours there. Video games are created by great psychologists to “hook” your brain: they know well which strings, which neuro-cerebral elements to grasp.
What would you say to a parent who might respond, “It’s too late now, I can no longer repair the damage done or take away from my child a world that is no longer just theirs, but that of their peers?”
It’s absolutely not too late. This technology is “only” 10 years old, it’s a drop in the bucket in history. We are perfectly on time, but we must not waste time. Believe me, the parents are all with us, they were impatiently waiting for an initiative like this to help them. As we said yesterday in the Senate, we cannot expect parents to be police officers. It was the State that put the red light on the roads, not on motorists. Parents must educate their children, but they cannot become police officers, this is an absurd statement. These are the same adolescent psychologists who expect parents to do with their adolescents what society does not help them do. We are all bombarded, children and parents, by the biggest companies in the world, giants who have incredible powers of persuasion and advertising power. They also managed to manipulate the claimthey put the famous everywhere claim “digital natives”, the so-called “children of touch”, then came the idea that this was progress. Fortunately, the situation has changed. Unfortunately, as we mentioned, many specialists do not want to recognize that the operation of smartphones for children and adolescents is not only unsuccessful, but dangerous.
So are you debunking parents: “Let’s not leave them alone, because they too are victims”?
Of course, they are also victims of society. If we have to find the culprits, it is them, these specialists who pushed the parents to think that it was the right thing to do. Many of them are also in bad faith, because they are sponsored by the companies in question. Whereas parents just need to be helped.