I started reading this book in pdf then, while I was delving into the effects of screens on our bodies (and also on our minds), I decided to close the file to go to the Paulines and purchase a paper copy of I stop whenever I want. How to get out of smartphone addiction (and maybe teach it to your children)the last book that Roberto Marchesini wrote for Il Timone.
Now, it’s well known that that screen made us go crazy. You only have to walk down the street to see armies of smombies (mobile phone zombies) to realize this. They struggle to walk (or rather: we struggle, given that the writer often does it too) with their nose glued to the pixels, to quickly respond to the messages with which we are inundated on Whatsapp, or to check the notifications that arrive from Instagram or from Facebook (the younger ones, therefore not us, watch TikTok instead). But we don’t live like this anymore. We stay online, forgetting that real life is offline. We are at the table with someone but in the meantime we are talking to someone else. And we’re not really with anyone.
Yes, because in the age of social media we are increasingly alone. And insecure. Fragile. Marchesini writes, referring to a study entitled Social Media and Youth Mental Health: “Excessive and problematic use of social media, such as compulsive or uncontrollable use, has been linked to sleep problems, attention problems and feelings of exclusion among teenagers.” Especially on the little ones, the effects of screens are devastating: “By preventing the child from relating directly to reality, they impoverish his learning.” It is one of the reasons why children struggle to be together and, paradoxically, prefer to play at a distance, obviously through a screen. So no contact. No comparison. Goodbye skin, welcome pixels. It’s the technology, you might say. And it can’t be stopped. True, or maybe not. Because all this has a cost – personal and social – which also has to do with our freedom. Because that telephone, so modern because it is wireless, has created a much thicker and more dangerous wire called addiction. An addiction that, perhaps, is not the result of chance but is desired. “Nudging is leverage: if you behave in a certain way, you will be rewarded.
Obviously, the tool for checking that citizens behave properly is digital and is called a citizen wallet.” Reward those who behave well and punish those who don’t. A dictatorship with a smile. Just a click away.