This week I was reading that Seattle Public Schools they have denounced to big tech companies like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook for harm the mental health of young people. American professors argue that the emergence of suicidal tendencies and other serious mental disorders are the consequence of a model of digital business that, consciously, exploits psychology and neurophysiology Of the youngs.
The attitude of the schools constitutes excellent news to the extent that it intends to denounce and redirect one of the greatest dysfunctions of the accelerated digital transformation. As has happened at other similar junctures throughout history, the technological revolution fractures society, dividing it between winners and losers. But today the digital situation places us in a scenario of a complexity never seen before, because its effects on the inequalityits incidence on the mental health, by transforming the way we understand and relate to each other. So, the youth digital addiction It is already the one that worries our mental health professionals the most.
For too many years, the erroneous and interested idea that the digital revolution is unstoppable has prevailed, that regulating it is like trying to put doors on the countryside. However, technology, like economic globalization, can and does must be regulated attending to the general interest. If not, the conflict is resolved outright, as history teaches us well.
Along with the regulation of public powers, some experts appeal to the responsibility of parents and educators so that children and young people have more leisure time, in which they are not subject to regulated activities or exposed to the overstimulating bombardment of the digital. That kick back the boredom habit, something so reviled by the dominant discourse in our days. This was perfectly understood, more than a century and a half ago, by the fictional character who gives this column its name, Oblomov. His inactivity and indolence can serve as an example. One more reason to read him.
