CREMONA – Meeting with Michele Marangi on May 8th at 9pm at the Ponchielli Theater in Cremona to understand what’s new and to what extent the digital behaviors of our time can be defined as addictions.
How does an addiction arise? What is the mechanism that keeps us glued to the smartphone mirror screen for hours? What effects do digital behaviors have on the mental health of young people? New addictions are one of the four topics that will be covered in the Talk «Adolescence, because growing up can be difficult».
Speaking about it, in dialogue with the boys and girls, will be Marangi (Media educator and professor at the Catholic University of Milan) who explains «Beyond professional involvement – on topics that I study and do research on – and reliability of those who organize it, there are two things that convinced me to participate in this event: the evening in the theatre, “in” and “for” the city and not in a conference room for specialists and the talk style. I think that the dialogue between different professionalisms and knowledge, in the logic of comparison and mutual enrichment, with the performative contribution of teenagers, becomes a further stimulus for the public thanks to the different and engaging languages”.
THE ONLINE LIFE OF TEENAGERS AND THE INSECURITIES OF ADULTS
If it is true that the distinction between online and offline reality is no longer so clear «the internet is the life in which anything can happen», it is equally true that the effects of constant connection can influence the social skills of adolescents both in a positive and negative (on average a teenager stays connected for 3.5 hours a day). For this reason, Marangi adds «I believe it is important to address the topic to understand first of all what is actually new and to what extent they can be called dependencies. Often we adults tend to direct towards adolescents a series of anxieties and insecurities which in fact characterize more our need for “control” or our fears towards phenomena that we do not understand or even do not perceive in their complexity. In this sense, working ‘with’ adolescents and not just ‘for’ them, can allow us to better frame new ways of relating to technologies which, on the one hand, allow us to understand the risks and problems, but on the other provide possible keys to understanding and practices of use that are updated with the transformations of the times we live in”.
HOW DIGITAL HAS CHANGED OUR LIVES
Social media use among young people is nearly universal: it affects 95% of adolescents and 40% of children aged between 8 and 12 years. A third or more of girls aged 11 to 15 say they feel “addicted” to certain platforms. Not only. The 2022 Censis report highlights how young people aged 14 to 19 use WhatsApp (93%), YouTube (83.3%) and Instagram (80%) to get information. Also for this reason Marangi specifies «On 8 May we will try to reflect on the changes that digital has brought to the lives of all of us and to take a deep dive into the ways in which teenagers use it, trying both to grasp the main risks that can running, and to verify new possibilities that allow a more conscious and balanced use. We will talk, among other things, about the aggressiveness of the market, the tracking of personal data, video games, the end of social networks, the potential and limits of artificial intelligence.”
OTHER TOPICS AND GUESTS OF THE TALK
Together with the new dependencies, three different themes will be addressed: ecoanxiety, gender identity and the wounded body. With Marangi there will be on stage Sara Segantin (writer and scientific communicator, collaborator of the television program Geo&Geo), Debora La Pusata (clinical psychologist and pedagogist Ala Milano Onlus, expert in issues relating to gender identity) e Alessandra Lupi (psychologist and psychotherapist, expert in adolescent distress, collaborator of the free counseling center of the Minotauro association in Milan).
Weaving the plot of the evening will be the Compagnia dei Piccoli which – between one intervention and another – will bring on stage three emblematic fragments of the show «Altrove» directed by Mattia Cabrini. He leads Andrea Marchesi of Radio Deejay.
The event was born from the meeting and discussion between Teatro Ponchielli, Rotary Cremona Monteverdi, Asst of Cremona and is created with the contribution of the Province of Cremona, Growens and Rotary District 2050; is sponsored by the Municipality of Cremona and the Medical Association of Cremona. It takes place in collaboration with the Cremona Student Council. The aim of the initiative is to provide information and arouse interest by making the best use of the communicative space of the theater to involve an audience of students, parents, teachers, educators, health and social-health workers and all interested people. We know that relational experiences help us grow and the Talk is designed to encourage dialogue and awareness regarding the era we are living in and the phenomena that characterize it.
The original idea of the Talk is closely connected to the Keep in Mind project: Keep in Mind, created by the territorial Child Neuropsychiatry and the Communication and External Relations Office of the Asst of Cremona which, in 2023, involved 614 adolescents through a survey to understand how and if they inform themselves on the subject of mental health. The results of the research provided the elements to build a social column on the Instagram profile of the Cremona Asst (https://www.instagram.com/asstcremona) together with a group of boys, girls and health and socio-health workers.
To purchase tickets: www.teatroponchielli.it
