Living in an age of technology, most people come to depend on their phones more than on any other object. The fear of living without a mobile phone, or nomophobia [1], is growing in alarm, especially among teenagers. Even data shows that 99.2% of the users experience feelings of fear and anxiety if their phone is not with them[2]. But when they do have it with them, statistics show that a puberty-aged user[3] opens their phone at least 150 times a day[2]. Last but not least, 48% of teenagers prefer to spend time with their friends online rather than face-to-face[2]. All these data indicate that we are facing a crisis in virtual addiction. This crisis is increasingly highlighted in the context of the natural desire of teenagers to define their own identity. What makes this crisis so striking among today’s adolescents is their choice of cyberspace as a medium for manifesting their new identity, or rather their new profile in the social media space.
In the following, we will seek to explore this phenomenon by answering the following questions:
- How did this form of addiction arise?
- What are the effects of repeated exposure to virtual reality?
- Why is it that real friends know our face first and not just our profile?
1. HOW DID THIS FORM OF ADDICTION ARISE?
The addiction to posting as well as the addiction to social validation from posting finds concrete evidence in the fear that most teenagers feel when they don’t have their phone with them. As mentioned in the introduction, more than 99% of young people experience feelings of anxiety and fear, namely the feeling of fear born from not being ‘connected’. After all, the lack of concrete reality of this profile presented in the virtual social medium is what most often leads to addiction to the phone and inevitably to that approval from the community formed in this space. We who are digital natives have learned from a very young age to connect to the world and others through technology. It was inevitable that the affirmation of self-identity that accompanies adolescent development would also find expression through the virtual medium. Naturally, the self of the developing young person is a fragile one. After all, they are in the process of transformation towards their future adult identity. The way he or she perceives himself is therefore still lacking the stability of full maturity. Unfortunately, however, teenagers today have an additional challenge compared to previous generations. They have learned as young children to perceive reality through a screen, which has unknowingly become a controllable surface of the world. After all, the world began and ended with the TV screen that captured all their attention. The screen presented them with reality, so why would they need to use a little car or a doll to play with, to simulate life concretely? By the time they were teenagers, their belief in the reality of the screen was already well grounded, and without realizing it, the world they were given to know and explore was reduced to that small image that fits on a glass surface. The space of the world is no longer directly explored through the body, and its inner representation that is naturally formed through one’s sensations could no longer receive a solid basis for the emergence of a self grounded thoroughly in reality. The new reconfiguration of the self that emerges in puberty and adolescence no longer had a stable foundation because of the gaps that the child had experienced in his earlier development. Therefore the validation he needed to reinvent himself also sought it in cyberspace, where he was already used to interacting with the world and receiving rewards (feedback) for his actions. In such a developmental storyline, experiencing anxiety in the absence of a screen is not surprising. Especially when you so desperately need approval in the new identity you are forming as a teenager, and the screen is where you have mirrored yourself since childhood.
2. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF REPEATED EXPOSURE?
Although technology in itself is neither good nor bad, only the way it is administered leads to positive or negative effects, the results of massive long-term exposure to technology are devastating for the harmonious development of young people, as a multitude of studies show[3]. The screen addiction experienced by most teenagers today can in many cases lead to difficulties with attention, concentration, and information processing, as well as delays in language and social skills development. We are talking about long-term effects that decrease the academic performance and social adjustment of adolescents in later life as adults.
Studies such as “Association Between Screen Time and Children’s Performance on a Developmental Screening Test” published in JAMA Pediatrics in March 2019 [4], clearly show us that heavy screen use during adolescence can affect brain development, including cognitive and emotional function.
Young people are required to create a new identity beyond their parents to become functioning adults, an identity that requires social validation. However, when their main social environment is virtual and therefore requires the use of a screen, the purpose of prolonged exposure to technology cannot be beneficial, given the very high level of flexibility of their developing brain[5]. 5] Especially as today’s teenagers are very vulnerable to the addiction of posting that compels them to spend most of the day in front of a screen. Inevitably the price will be paid, because we always reap what we sow, even if the effects are not immediately visible.
3. WHY DO REAL FRIENDS KNOW OUR FACE AND NOT OUR PROFILE?
The human face is that divine gift of creation, through which each of us has the chance to realize the unity between his identity known to others and his essential and intimate nature. This connection is possible only through the love of the Creator, from whose bounty I came as a unique being, but also other people around me, who are also bearers of his image in their turn. To live in truth is very difficult, but what is possible, when we take life as a growth, is to grow more and more in the reality of love that links our appearance to our essence. But how is this achieved we might legitimately ask?
A friend knows you for better or worse we might say. He knows the brilliance of your qualities that draw him to you, but also the shadows that accompany your flaws, the ones that manifest themselves when life no longer gives you what you expect to receive from it. Know who you are in your wholeness, perhaps often better than you are willing to know yourself. We have seen that teenagers create a new identity at this time in their lives, and for this identity to stabilize for them, they need a social environment to validate it. They need to be affirmed by friends, by those to whom they look kindly and openly. So friendship in adolescence is very important because, through mutual encouragement, young people learn to explore reality together and to support each other in the new adventure that life puts before them. One who is a true friend will be there for you as you develop, in the stages when your qualities are showing themselves expansively, but also in the times when flaws make you self-sabotaging and paralyzed. He knows your face and by no means just your profile in the virtual world. This profile is cosmetic by the many filters you have applied to your photos and by the perfection of the images you have chosen to display, which are nothing more than those ideal shots taken after many attempts to capture only what you consider worth displaying from who you are.
CONCLUSION
Today’s teenager, the soon-to-be tomorrow’s adult, has grown up with a screen in front of him or her, which has also predisposed him or her more than any other generation to this new form of addiction. His developing identity has been contaminated from the beginning by abnormal exposure to technology. This has inevitably led to the need to be reflected, in other words, to be validated in the process of forming his new identity, by others through the screen, more specifically by his virtual community. The problem is that what is artificial cannot satisfy, so the need for posting and related feedback has become something that has come to control many. The effects of such an approach have already become visibly unpleasant, and this is because the cognitive, emotional, and social functions of many young people have been affected, aspects that are now measurable. But only future consequences and long-lasting social repercussions will show us the ultimate implications of this crisis when our world will be ruled by adults who have grown up constantly exposed to screens. The only solution remains real friendships, those in which the other has a chance to know your true face, to go beyond your public social identity, and to see who you essentially are. This takes courage, this takes an understanding of the danger we’re in, and taking on the fight to connect with others in authentic ways.
David (16 ani) + Fineas (…)
Bibliography:
[1] PUBERTY n. The period of human life between childhood and adolescence, characterized by the maturation of the sex glands, the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, and intense psychological development.
[2] 50 Most Surprising Smartphone Addiction Statistics in 2023
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomophobia
Nomofobia (prescurtare de la “no mobile phobia”) este un cuvânt care desemnează teama sau anxietatea cauzată de faptul că nu ai un telefon mobil funcțional.
[5] Madigan S, Browne D, Racine N, Mori C, Tough S. Association Between Screen Time and Children’s Performance on a Developmental Screening Test. JAMA Pediatr. 2019;173(3):244–250.
doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.5056
[6] Lisa L Weyandt, Christine Clarkin, Emily Z Holding, Shannon E May, (2020), Neuroplasticity in children and adolescents in response to treatment intervention: A systematic review of the literature, Clinical and Translational Neuroscience 4(2):2514183X2097423. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514183X2097423
