Teenagers, media and new technologies

2017;14 (No. 3):

Editorial

Pages:6 to
6

Authors:

Abstract

Today, we are all digital citizens. Every day, innovations, new channels and resources emerge, where the potential for communication is enormous. However, it is necessary to create and preserve the responsible and appropriate use of this technology. Everything we put on the internet leaves a footprint, as if it were a trail associated with our identity, called a digital fingerprint, which will be recorded forever. Therefore, it is advisable, before taking any action, to think carefully about the consequences, especially when it comes to adolescents, who have not yet reached sufficient emotional maturity to understand the weight and consequences of their exposure on social and digital networks.

We need to analyze the issues surrounding adolescence in a broader way, always going beyond what is apparent. Adolescents are individuals with all their rights, in an important phase of growth, development and maturation – cerebral, mental, emotional, social. In this phase of intense transformations, they become a more vulnerable social group, including to the influences of the media contexts, their social environment and pressure from peer groups of adolescents themselves.

Today, we talk a lot about inappropriate use of technology by adolescents. But we cannot blame our teenagers for possible misuse if we do not teach them and, above all, experience what we consider appropriate, healthy and ethical.

It is vital that teenagers are guided and directed to seek help, that they are heard and that they understand the reason for the massification of violence. Teenagers need to learn, in a digital literacy concept, what media is, who makes this media, with what intentions it is structured, what its reach is, what to do to protect itself. Teenagers need to discern what they are seeing there in that media. Reflect on the video they access, on the game that captivates them, on the product that is being “consumed” or even enslaving them to the consumption of wanting more, more and more products.

Most television programs, films and videos broadcast and massify the sexualized, drugged, abused, distorted teenager, always the problematic teenager. With this exposure, the teenager even receives some attention, but negative attention… Why doesn’t society give this teenager positive, healthy attention ? Why doesn’t it invest in the health of this teenager, instead of highlighting his illness?

Therefore, in terms of helping and educating these adolescents, it is essential that health professionals, parents and educators understand the relevant issues not only about the internet, but about all technologies. Only in this way can there be digital culture, which is a right for everyone. We need to exercise Article 227 of our Federal Constitution, which emphasizes that it is the duty of the family, society and the State to ensure that children, adolescents and young people have the right to life and health as an absolute priority. We need to live out this priority, which is what it means to exercise full citizenship with dignity.

Isabel Bouzas – Editor in Chief
Felipe Jannuzzi – Executive Editor