The interaction between adolescents and new information and communication technologies through the Internet and online/offline games currently represents a new challenge for parents and health and education professionals. Smartphones, notebooks, computers and many new devices and applications are part of adolescents’ routines and are accessible as if they were an extension of their hands. These new features are attractive as entertainment and information, but they also bring risky situations involving adolescent behavior and relationships, both with family and friends and at school.

Data obtained in the 2016 TIC KIDS ONLINE-Brazil survey, conducted by CETIC/CGI, show that 24.3 million children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17 from all social classes are Internet users, which corresponds to 82% of this population in Brazil. Of these, 40% play online video games connected with other players, and 47% play online offline. Games come in many different types and include sports, adventure, mystery, puzzles, wars, violent combats and many other simulations with championships, including MMORPGs ( Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) . And suddenly, teenagers take on new digital identities and become gamers, avatars, streamers, YouTubers and want the rewards of being celebrities with lots of likes on Facebook . Feeling accepted or popular, or rejected and isolated, becomes a routine that permeates curiosity and distraction, and is incorporated into habits during the days, nights and weekends until digital dependence.

In the most recent ICD-11, the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization (2018), gaming disorders were included as criteria to classify gaming disorder , a mental and behavioral illness 6 C 71. Other scientific evidence shows that several brain regions are affected during development in adolescence, mainly the limbic region of emotions and the prefrontal cortex of impulsivity control. Dangerous challenges, such as choking games and group “games” such as sucking cinnamon powder, talcum powder, putting condoms between the nose and mouth, and inhaling deodorants are causing episodes of asphyxiation and suffocation, fainting, fatal accidents, and even increasing suicide rates among young people. Increased aggressive behavior, sudden mood swings, and episodes of cyberbullying need to be diagnosed and prevented during adolescence.

It is up to health professionals to be alert, to hold more lectures in schools, to include prevention activities in care routines and during community interventions, and to know that digital technologies need to be built as proactive social bridges to new knowledge, and never as deadly abysses of exploitation of human suffering. The intersectoral work of social protection of adolescents and the new public policies, including the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (article 29) and the update of the Indicative Classification by the Ministry of Justice are some of the initiatives that the Adolescence & Health Journal currently supports.

Evelyn Eisenstein
Scientific Editor