2024-08-14 14:42:20
“In the summer, life is easy” – at least that’s what they say. During the long holiday season, many parents will be spending more time with their children and want to control their screen time and hopefully get them outdoors. They’ll be on the lookout for one behavior in particular: doomscrolling.
Doomscrolling, the phenomenon of endless, mind-numbing scrolling engineered on smartphones, has been particularly rampant since the Covid-19 crisis, posing major health challenges. People engaged in this activity are at risk for anxiety and cognitive overload due to processing too much information.
However, my research gives us reason to be optimistic. I surveyed 252 teenagers aged 11 to 19 and found that teenagers have more than one trick to avoid Temptation on the Internet.
social sharing phenomenon
Before we turn to them, we need to warn against these findings and remind us: doomsday scroll This is by no means a generational phenomenon. As online users, we are all exposed to and affected by the strategies platforms devise to encourage us to stay connected for as long as possible.
From the moment we start using connected things, this compelling industry concerns all of us, regardless of our age or status. Indeed, many Teens point to less than exemplary smartphone use by adultssuch as 14-year-old Nicolas:
“‘My stepdad spends an incredible amount of time on Facebook, and then he told me, ‘Hey, oh, relax on Snapchat, Nico.’”
Sixteen-year-old Lucy is well aware that the connected society we live in is turning smartphones into indispensable everyday items in professional, academic or personal settings. She calls on adults to become more self-aware:
It’s not just me or the young people who have to stop doing this, parents are no better and they can’t handle things any better than we can.
Between guilt and coping strategies
Smartphones play an important role in teenagers’ digital lives. this Purpose Meet social needs that provide critical structure for this life stage, as well as many information needsnews or issues related to their interests or school activities.
When I hear teenagers talk about their relationship with their smartphones, I’m struck by the guilt that emanates from their conversations. For example, 17-year-old Ambre admitted:
“Sometimes you feel bad about yourself because it ruins your sleep, family time, time you should be spending doing homework or being outside.”
However, Melvin noted:
“The time you spend [on your phone]which makes you really anxious, but it’s also tricky because you can’t isolate yourself from the world either! You need balance, you know?
As online users, we are all faced with platform strategies that encourage us to stay connected for as long as possible.
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Teenagers are seeking this balance, employing a variety of strategies to try to monitor their time, hobbies and self-esteem: “When I waste time like this, I feel like crap,” says 17-year-old Roman.
The most common of these strategies is to activate “Personal” or “Do Not Disturb” mode on the phone in an attempt to increase focus on the task. Some people make more drastic decisions, including not installing apps they think may be problematic. This was the case for 17-year-old Jeffrey, who “chose not to download TikTok precisely because it takes too much time.”
Another oft-reported tactic is to temporarily uninstall apps when faced with a flood of notifications, “just long enough for the nerves to ease,” noted Juliette, 17. During stressful revision periods or when they suffer from information overload:
Sometimes, I can feel it and I feel oppressed by it and I can’t manage it anymore so I uninstall the app. Then I immediately feel better, like the stress has been lifted, and then when I feel like I’ve calmed down a little bit, so to speak, then I reinstall the app […] I simply cannot not use it, it is impossible, I need it, I like it, I use it to learn things, I also use it to follow the news” (Apolline, 16 years old).
Education, the biggest enemy of Doomsday Scrolls
These interviews raise the question of how adults can support adolescents in their efforts to avoid information overload.
Of course, the idea of tight control is illusory and even counterproductive, as it only creates frustration. More importantly, such measures fail to empower teenagers and instill a sense of responsibility. Addressing this issue head-on requires an educational response on multiple levels.
First, it seems necessary to consider the nature of the problem: it is a problem shared by society, and everyone is looking for tips to avoid getting lost in the process. To encourage focus, we could do worse than disabling as many notifications as possible in our most time-consuming apps. What’s more, too many things end up taking away any enjoyment one gets from an app or platform: the more control you have over how much time you spend online, the more you’ll enjoy it.
That said, to understand what drives us to doomscrolling, we need to understand The dynamics of the attention economyand learn more about the processes that run through us as we implement strategies for the digital industry (dark pattern, Emotional designespecially.
Are we all obsessed with social networking? (Decod’actu – Lumni, 2018).
The government should also step in. For example, the European Union Digital Market Law The DMA is a good step in the right direction to protect online users and counterbalance platform economic and industrial power.
Given its true existential importance, we should arm our young people with media literacy skills, including strategies for dealing with information overload. All teenagers talked about their difficulties in coping with this information fatigue and the process of capturing it, but most importantly, they also talked about a desire to share quality time with others, including family.
Teenagers told me they wanted to be informed and Have the power to take action on the world around you. So we can only advise them to subscribe to these with us “positive media”whose mission is to bring us good news. Not only can we support algorithms in different ways by imposing another ideal world on them (our own), but we can also share information that feels good and enriches social interactions.
at last, Slow down when faced with acceleration It is a major political issue. Because slowing down means taking time to reflect and mature our thoughts. Have civic qualities. This might even mean rolling together.
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