Conceiving a single moment of the day without his cell phone in hand to check what was happening in the world was impossible for Gustavo Villate, a professional who at 53 years of age, like a significant percentage of adults, especially children and young people, suffers from cyberdependency, a silent enemy that can trigger problems on a mental and physical level.
“Phubbing”, ignore a person for looking at the cell phone; “axiety”, tension and confusion for believing that messages or notifications arrive without this really happening; “Textophrenia”, perception that they left us in sight, and “vamping”breaking the sleep cycle by checking the cell phone between the covers, are some of the manifestations of this pathological tendency.
“When we talk about cyberdependence, it consists of behavior linked over time, in which an adolescent or an adult interacts excessively with electronic devices. It generally has the term nomophobia, which is when they are in social situations and instead of interacting they prefer to connect with the cell phone to see social networks, enter YouTube or other platforms, “he explained to THE NEW CENTURY Laura Santamaríaprofessor at the Faculty of Psychology of the Fundación Universitaria Sanitas.
That was the case of Villate, who worked more than 10 years ago as a project manager in a company where he had to connect to his computer all day and at the same time was a university professor. In addition to his two professions, his taste for being well informed was the trigger for some symptoms of this pathology to begin to appear.
One of the most common was the refusal to have social interactions. “I was at a work or family lunch and was already connected to the internet. I avoided going to social gatherings and commitments to be connected, informing myself of many things”, Gustavo tells.
But this addiction can not only occur in adults; It even affects the child and youth population even more. The 2021 statistics from the Ministry of Information Sciences and Technologies (MinTic), indicate that “children and young people between the ages of eight and 18 spend an average of 44.5 hours per week in front of computers and devicesand almost 23% of young people report that they feel addicted to video games.”
“We must not forget that over time cyberdependence can increase in the child population, since children have inevitably been exposed to the use of these devices as a distraction or study tool due to the pandemic,” said occupational therapist Farid Andrés Patiño Cortés, from the National University of Colombia, specialist in Human Development Management, Social and Business Welfare.
An example of this is Juan Camilo González, a 14-year-old teenager who, despite being passionate about technology since he was six years old, during the start of the pandemic began to experience the consequences of connecting most of his days to different technological devices, not only for their virtual classes, but also to play online or check their social networks.
“I practically spent the whole day on the computer, I didn’t do anything else, I didn’t even watch television. And when classes were over she was still on the computer playing. In fact, when we went back to school I had some problems because sometimes I couldn’t control myself and I couldn’t put down the phone,” Juan Camilo told this newspaper.
signs or symptoms
Specialist Patiño explains that “when the person presents anxiety or restlessness, changes in mood, drowning or fatigue when their electronic device is not nearbyit is an alarm signal that he is suffering from a dependency”.
“These changes are caused by a biochemical process that occurs in the brain due to continuous exposure to light, movements and sounds produced by the devices, which indicate to the brain that it must be alert or vigilant because ‘something is coming plus’. This causes the person to enter a state of anxiety because he needs to be more stimulated, that is, to receive more content or to continue playing ”.
Fatigue was one of the symptoms presented by Juan Camilo, who upon returning to face-to-face classes could not perform very well in sports. “The problem was not exercising for a long time because I began to notice fatigue and, for example, I couldn’t run well at school because I got too tired or I wasn’t breathing well. Physically, it was very complicated for me”he acknowledged.
For his part, Gustavo, in addition to having problems interacting with different people, cyberdependency led him to have problems in his sentimental relationship, since from 10 to 12 hours he was 100% connected, even late at night.
“My relationship with my partner deteriorated a lot. In fact, I am divorced. That affected a lot in that I could spend 3:00 in the morning connected to the Internet, researching, consulting or reading. It also affected the relationship with my relatives because one becomes more introverted and makes one put aside the relationship with people.
controlled use
One of the most applicable recommendations for children is monitor mobile device usage and website browsing; for young people, establish limits on the use of these devices in social, family or other types of interactions, and for the life cycle of adults it is suggested to “disconnect” these devices during non-working hours, in order to improve interactions with their around.
“It is necessary to review the time we spend being in an activity like this and start organizing time for activities that are not related to technology,” recommended Laura Santamaría.
A strategy that was key in Juan Camilo’s process: “I knew that I spent a long time on the phone and when I saw this I tried to assign myself certain times to play and currently I only use the cell phone for short periods of time and to which I have gotten used to before. ”.
In the case of Gustavo, although he has not managed to completely eradicate this addiction, his greatest motivation to put aside this need to be connected is his two-year-old daughter, as well as proposing schedules for each activity. “I have had to set schedules and that has been a key point. Define which spaces are for the family and which are for being connected. For example, If I go to lunch I leave my cell phone at home and by not having it I can interact and avoid discomfort for people. The fact of having a two-year-old girl has also helped me a lot to disconnect because I am always very aware of her”.
Another of Santamaría’s recommendations is to prioritize and be selective in the content that is consumed on social networks, since this “can give you a little more control over what you see and the time you will dedicate to social networks. activities through social networks.
Some tips that can also help are: use one phone for work and other personal; for one day, do not use electronic devices; put mobile devices off in a box while having lunch or dinner; and go to the park to walk the dog, but without a mobile device.
“If the person has cyberdependency, the family should seek the intervention of a professional in order to be diagnosed and treated,” said specialist Farid Andrés Patiño.
Finally, he points out that “the world is going to suffer from a strong social epidemic that will be mental health, because human beings are being exposed to diminishing our social relationships due to the loss of verbal and non-verbal communication and the generation of affective bonds. as a result of said technologies and impersonal forms of communication”.