A study by the Reina Sofía Center on Adolescence and Youth has analyzed how new technologies (and especially social networks) they are influencing communication between young people aged 16 to 26. For example, one of the conclusions suggests that "who does not participate in this relational dynamic is considered" rare "or" independent. "
Social Networks on the Internet: not only advantages
The majority discourse of adolescents and young people is positive: they enjoy the advantages and comforts offered by social networks and pay with apparent pleasure.or that they interpret as minor counterparts. Among the disadvantages are the loss of part of their privacy, which they assume as normal since everyone does, the difficulty of rejecting or ignoring requests for communication or friendship, forcing a continuous public exposure (perhaps unwanted). Or even feel a certain dependence.
They themselves confess that without the ICTs they would feel isolated, incommunicado, incomplete and that they would not know how to fill in routines, how to integrate or how to socialize. They accept that networks can make one feel "more dependent"; but it is a dependency that does not worry them excessively because they consider it typical of the time in which they live
And yet, remember that those adolescents who have few offline skills are at risk of developing disocial behaviors on the Internet; and in my opinion the years of preadolescence, and until the end of Secondary Education, are key so that parents can detect if something is wrong; and look for a solution, obviously.
Looking for balance
It is essential for young people to learn to make the online self compatible (within the network) and the offline self (outside the network, in the face-to-face interaction); since it is two sides of the same coin, complementary elements that must be consistent and balanced, in no case contradictory. Therefore, in no case do they consider it acceptable to lie in the online exhibition, for example.
This implies a continuous effort for young people, also taking into account the changing netiquette standards, the rapid evolution of technology and the pressure for not feeling marginalized
Young people do not interact less by spending more time on social networks, but they relate differently. In fact, with social networks their relationships become more complex and numerous. Which to some extent also involves a double risk.
What risk do you talk about?
On the one hand, conditioning habits and routines around social networks can isolate from the closest environment (family fundamentally). And, on the other hand, communicational noise (simultaneous chats, group chats, open conversations, etc.) sometimes generates low intensity, superfluous, voluble, depersonalized relationships.
Faced with the oral and gestural language of face-to-face communication to transmit the “important and serious” things, the written online language (with the help of audiovisual and emoticons) generates a different communication: flexible, tending to inconsequence and anecdote. Although paradoxically This communication also allows the revision and correction of the message and to control the response, projecting a more leisurely and conscious image of oneself.
I would like to conclude by providing this Guide on Social Networks for parents, which can help us not only to understand the apparent “need” that young people have for them, but how to exercise supervision in order to learn to make life compatible off / on . And I also want to point out that while in early adolescence it can be difficult to manage the fact of being “the weird / the weird” in the class from the age of 16/17, there are girls and many boys who consciously exercise this oddity, and not at all an impediment to maintain social relations.
And make it clear that you are never “the only / the only one” who has no data rate on your mobile, or who do not allow you to upload photos of yourself to the profile… you are never the only one; Sometimes the independence of the group is a value that parents should encourage, especially if our children are well positioned in their social relationships.
In this issue of Social Networks we all have a lot to learn, and we must all observe our own behavior online, because on more than one occasion adults give a very bad example.
