Talking about the Internet, social networks, video games means facing the complexity of the virtual world, both in its positive and negative aspects. These virtual platforms have become part of everyday life for billions of people, facilitate many aspects of both recreational and working activities and offer useful tools to increase the quality of life. At the same time, however, they hide some dangerous pitfalls for psychic balance, both for adults and for those who most use it: adolescents. Addiction to the Internet and video games is a current problem.
It is on the side of possible risks that we want to focus our attention, to highlight what may be the signs that indicate a pathological use of the Internet, social networks and video games. It is not only overuse that is pathological in itself, but also how these tools are used.
An ambiguous world
Although the virtual world can now be a way to enter into relationship with the other, immediately and beyond the physical space, just this virtual relationship can be used in a defensive and harmful, especially among the youngest. For example, in many people suffering from social phobia, the Internet can be used not so much to bypass this condition, but to avoid even more the human contact face to face, worsening the state of the disease and giving an illusory sense of having made it out of fear of the real relationship.
The continuous exposure to videogames, online games and social networks change the way of perceiving oneself and others, the way of seeing and living the surrounding world. In fact, what many young people have to deal with for most of the hours of the day does not consist in the “real” world but artificially created, in a computer space, which goes beyond the limits of everyday reality, applying its rules (often non-rules) to which to comply in order to make the best use of the platform chosen.
Just think of the immediacy of reaching people through smartphones, the use of online chats or social networks, to be always informed about the activities of others that interest us. One can create the illusion of always being in company, when in reality one finds oneself in solitude with one's own smartphone/console, a solitude denied by superficial, circumstantial relationships based on the appearance of social sharing. Or, just as dangerous, we are increasingly building a façade Self, of appearance, predominant but not true, for fear of being judged “not enough” by our followers, who have taken the place of friends.
Anxieties, worries and violence
The use of the virtual world has thus allowed the proliferation of pages in which the ideal models can become more and more ideal, more and more perfect, building an insurmountable gap between reality and virtually/appearance.
Especially in adolescence, a period of life during which one is strongly looking for an ideal to be inspired by, the continuous exposure to idealized models of success, talent, beauty, wealth, “beautiful life”, can lead to a distortion of one's sense of perceived effectiveness, of self-esteem.
On the one hand, the aspiration to models of life that may seem “above the rules”, characterized by wealth, beauty, exceptional qualities achieved without effort, can create in young people the illusion of being “special”, omnipotent and therefore above the rules shared. To them everything is due, as superior beings because they are so similar to their own ideal models. Omnipotence soon results in violence and aggressiveness towards the less powerful, victims on whom to launch to assert their strength. Episodes of violence by young people against people in difficulty are regularly present in the news, as well as the now widespread acts of cyberbullying. This violent phenomenon is facilitated by the distance that the virtual world places between itself and the real world. Relationships become depersonalized, anonymous and this can encourage the birth of cyberbullying phenomena in even extreme forms, which can make the victims suffer in front of an audience of thousands of people, amplifying even more the pain. The lack of adequate defense systems against cyberbullying makes the suffering of victims even more unbearable and difficult to fight...