While she spends time on the phone

What have we capitulated to as parents, and what can we do, when we have not yet managed to avoid the stampede of a teenager in a meeting with a ticker or YouTuber?

The avalanche of questions was started by such a meeting of the founders with tick star Sara Damnjanović in Mladenovac Square, which marked this year’s Children’s Week and once again exposed the truth that many adults fell short. of certain challenges of parenting in the digital environment.

Poll:

Does your child have a phone?

Children look too much at the screens of “smart” devices, hanging from “YouTube”, “Tiktok”, “Instagram”, “Snapčet” … Why do they do that? It was not caused by home confinement, curfew or quarantine korone, this happened long before the pandemic. Because it’s not just about easy fun. It is serious business behind a scientific approach to addiction. Radomir Markovic, an IT expert, warns about that, in an interview for our newspaper, stating that children are not to blame for spending a lot of time in front of the screen, but rather sophisticated algorithms designed to cause addiction. He recommends everyone to watch the recently released documentary “The Social Dilemma”, in which, he says, those who created the applications explain that they hired casino experts for this job, to play games of chance and gambling.

– Children are the most threatened and most exposed to an unscrupulous system that does not allow them to watch a video clip on “YouTube”, but instead the next, similar, attractive one immediately serves them to keep their attention for a longer time. I click unconsciously indefinitely. Even while sliding, when the image on the screen is sliding down, it is based on the work of slot machines. It’s amazing what details the developers went to to get the user addicted, Markovic says.

The parents of today’s schoolchildren are not generations born in the digital environment and grown up on the Internet, but they must know the nature of the online space and the contents that are available there to know how to position themselves accordingly. It is necessary to limit the time that children spend on social networks and the Internet. This also means that at a certain period of the day, the device is taken out of sight, even disconnected from the Internet. For example, in agreement with the boys, to determine the afternoon time when they will be able to check the messages on social networks. Also, do not use the phone as an alarm clock, do not keep it near the bedside while we sleep, because there is a good chance that a new message will send us back to the online pages that “just by seeing this” we are wasting time again.

– Electronic interference is a way to get our attention even when we are not looking at the phone. From there, we constantly receive notifications, that is, notifications, that something “important” is happening, and it marked you, they liked your comment, someone commented on your publication … We forget that for what is really important there is a phone call – remembers Markovic.

Children should not be completely denied a stay on the Internet because they grow up in a digital environment, he notes, but a family agreement, and therefore a rule, should be that children interrupt themselves or have their parents pick up their phone after the limited time for online entertainment. And in that you must be constant and persistent. Recommends applications such as “Screen Time” or “Secure Teen” to parents with which they can see what the child has been watching and how much time has been spent on the Internet, and can also disable access to online content remotely on the device of the child.

That social networks do not affect all young people equally, but also that for many it becomes a basic form of social communication, which is disastrous for the formation of identity, because social networks are not realistic, it may seem that You don’t look like yourself, pretend not to, warns Branislava. Pavlović, clinical psychologist and family therapist. He points out that the stronger the family, the relationship with parents and the value system from within, the less the influence of external factors and even of social networks. Also, parents shouldn’t pretend that social media doesn’t exist. You have to talk about that.

– It should be discussed with them, and not just as a form of control. They don’t need to defend themselves, but look at some of the pictures with them and ask why they like it. It is important to understand the child, but also educate him about what content is acceptable and what is not, Pavlović points out, in addition to the fact that children before the age of 12 do not need social networks.

At puberty, when their main desire is to be loved and accepted, it is difficult for adolescents to separate the good from the bad, and that is why, according to the most popular Balkan tiktokerka Sara Damnjanović, it is necessary for parents to monitor children’s activities on social media.

– I’m not in favor of bans. There must be control. Not everything that can be seen there is for children, so I do not support all influencers and I do not think that all are a good example – says Damnjanovic, who has 1.9 million followers on “Tiktok”, and some of his sports videos on that platform they count around. 70 million visits.

He says he takes responsibility for his “virtual city” the size of Belgrade very seriously. She always tells the teenagers who follow her, for example, to be diligent and learn well, that it is not okay to insult the poor, but also to avoid extravagant content.

– A psychopath from Russia unearthed the girls’ graves, removed the corpses, mummified them, dressed them with dolls and installed music boxes in them. Believe it or not, this created a “trend” in “Tiktok”, whereby the girls of the world put makeup on those dolls, that is, dead girls, and imitate them. I had to react and ask the children not to follow those things – Damnjanovic evokes, adding that he does not tolerate the promotion of violence and vulgarity.

Licking a larger cup or the “challenge” of setting foot on jumping kids are some of the strange and dangerous “tendencies” that teenagers around the world have accepted just because they “like” to be “liked.” Popular influencers often break the law, for example by filming while driving. And just a month ago, criminal charges were brought against one of the children’s internet idols in Serbia, the popular Bake Pig, due to the teenage stampede in Novi Sad last year, for illegal sexual activities with a minor. This YouTuber, whose real name is Bogdan Ilić, talked about it in a video on his profile. His phrase that the girls he was in company with at that time “wanted to sleep with him in the ace because they knew he was popular” is a red alarm for all parents to think about who their children admire and when they choose as models. follow.

PARENTAL ANGLE

The gap between the online habits of children and adults

Gordana Plemić, director of the association “Parents”, realizes that there is a huge gap between the online habits of children and adults because new social networks are constantly emerging that moms and dads do not know and cannot follow.

– From “YouTube” to “Facebook”, “Instagram”, “Snapshot”, “Ticket” … We must understand and accept that it will not disappear. We cannot cope with the challenges of the virtual world because we do not know or accept it. That must change. We have to get involved, to see why our son is interested in a certain influencer, why he sees that content, what interests him, why his idol is only that YouTuber … We cannot ban social networks to children or we can ban them children’s activities online. We monitor 24 hours. Picking up the phone and banning internet access can only help them begin to hide that they are online and be there even more because we are defending them. Instead, we must allow children to introduce us to their virtual world, to imply that we also know what they are doing there and that when they don’t like something or are worried, they can ask us for help, without fear of being insulted or punished, and with the conviction that we will give them better advice than their peers – concludes Gordana Plemić.