Define your adolescence with one word. The question was posed this week by the Freeda account to its million and a half followers on Instagram. And it has received 2,500 responses, most of them repeated ad nauseum. “Depression, hell, anxiety, insecurity, eating disorders, misunderstanding, self-destruction, disorientation, complexes, frustration, crying, loneliness, bullying“, chaos, abandonment, trauma, emptiness…”. For every 20 painful words, some clueless “kalimotxo” appears. The word “free” and much less the adjective “happy” also sneaks in among the answers. Reading them has reminded me how painful adolescence has always been, even when it was analog. And it has made me reflect on how adults have become experts in condemning the great problem of adolescents and have resigned from the responsibility of accompanying them in the suffering of their difficulties.
The big problem, of course, is mobile. Or the internet or social networks, as you prefer. There is a broad adult consensus on this. That is to say, the great difficulty of young people is precisely their culture. And what is the solution we propose? Well, basically, demand that they disconnect, that they not have devices or limit their use. And along the way we forget that the problem of adolescence has been and continues to be pain. And the solution that adults can (and should) offer is accompaniment as a form of consolation. With this I do not mean that the mobile phone is a harmless device. On the contrary, it makes everything more difficult. The relationship with one’s own body, with food, with clothes, with success, with sex, with the canon of beauty, with sports… Even studying is more complicated with a diminished attention span due to technology. But we (over)protective adults are so overwhelmed with technological change that we have forgotten that culture, like identity, cannot be uprooted. And that the origin of pain is none other than life itself.
A few months ago I was part of a program the Manantial Foundation where we work on the relationship between mental health and technology with kids from different institutes in the Community of Madrid. In one of the groups, that of the Menéndez Pelayo public institute (Getafe), we asked the students about their fears. And despite spending several days training on the risks of technology, it turned out that its terrors did not pass through his mind. smartphone. Again, the answers were repeated. “Fear of hurting me, of being hurt, of not feeling enough, of not being happy, of not being liked, of being ignored, of not getting it, of losing my hope, of being left, of being deceived, to the University, to feel alone,” they declared. I am convinced that if I had put the mothers and fathers of that same group in another room that day and asked them about the fears they had about their daughters and sons, they would not have agreed on anything.
Mothers and fathers brag about how late we give this or that device to our children, but increasing the time of presence and listening to adolescents exposed to technology is not part of the failed collective and coercive therapy. Our teenagers are sad, alone and often in danger. But we, the analogues, were not happy either. And that shared pain brings us closer than any device distances us. We say they are made of glass, but we often forget that they are about to break. Therefore, if you have one close to you, do not judge, do not compare, do not think that your adolescence was better and listen to them.
If you want to support the production of quality journalism, subscribe.
Subscribe
Sign up here to the weekly Ideas newsletter.
#Analog #digital #adolescence #wont #matter