New technologies

What are ITC?

Historically, information and communication technologies (ICT) have transformed humanity from three essential channels: information, communication and entertainment. The telephone, the radio, the television … are good examples. When today we talk about new information and communication technologies (NICT) we must add to these classic technologies of use, now massive, at least in so-called first world societies, of other technologies such as the Internet or video games.

Why do we use ICT and why are they part of our lives?

Because there are many advantages that can be generated. Let’s see some:

  • They allow us to access illimited information.
  • They allow us to access new ways of communication and relationship.
  • They allow us to access new forms of entertainment and leisure.
  • They promote social and group relationships.
  • Facilitate communication between people with similar affinities and interests.
  • They can facilitate communication between members of a family.
  • They favor new skills and new forms of knowledge construction.
  • …

Risks of ICT

There are also many disadvantages that their misuse or abuse can generate. Let’s see some:

  • “Screenism”, that is, excessive exposure to paralyzing leisure before a screen, be it television, computer, mobile, video game …
  • Insulation tendency.
  • Interact with more virtual friends than real ones.
  • abandonment of everyday responsibilities.
  • Reduction of sleep hours.
  • Decrease in study hours.
  • Access to inappropriate content, especially in children and teenagers.
  • Incitement to consumerism (through, among others, advertising, websites and videogames).
  • Increase in economic spending.
  • Increased incommunicado and family conflicts.

Types of use of ICT

  • Non-problematic use: The amount and frequency of use of ICTs for the teenager / young does not produce adverse consequences in the main activities (academic and extra-curricular), in personal activities or in their family relationships.
  • Situation of Abuse: The teenager loses academic performance, is critical of extracurricular educational activities- he says that they bore him-, he is irritable when he is instructed to study or not to play with the computer so much.
  • Situation of Pathological (or Addictive) Abuse: When the teenager prioritizes the use of ICT in other activities. Most of the time he dedicates and he wants to dedicate to the activity and obtain permits and sometimes money to do it. School abandonment appears, family upset increases, spend more time connected to the network than with friends…

Risk factors of ICT in teenagers, personality

  • Impulsivity: acts without sufficiently measuring the consequences of the acts themselves. Need to get immediate reward. Difficulty resisting a rewarding act or thought. For example: in exam period, I connect before studying a time on Facebook or online game in case I overcome level 3.
  • Affective instability: very changing and bipolarized emotional state. ICT is a “refuge” to postulate the discomfort of the state of mind.
  • Low tolerance / low resistance to frustration: teenagers who do not accept that things do not go as planned … ICT is a way to channel negative feelings.
  • Self-centered behavior (Emperor’s syndrome): experience of invulnerability (“I can with everything”); Active oppositionism (“I do not feel like it”), little observance of family, school, social norms. ICTs are another way of challenge.
  • Repeated trend in search of new and intense sensations: teenagers who “get bored” with “normal” activities, who have risky behaviors (extreme sports without enough preparation, “gangsterism”, drug use …). ICTs become another way to obtain “other sensations”.
  • Low self-esteem and indecision: very hesitant, influential teenagers, who find it difficult to make decisions, tend to mimic the behavior of friends, especially leaders. The tendency is to abuse ICT by influence.
  • Feelings of loneliness: introverted teenagers, with relationship difficulties, with or without a few friends … ICTs offer multiple forms of “relationship” and solitary “fun”.

Internet risks

Sexting

Action of generating and sending insinuating and even erotic images or videos of oneself through mobile telephony or the computer, through messages or social networks. In this last case, for many of the teenagers who practice sexting, it is a way to attract visitors, votes … In short, to achieve popularity.

Ciberbullying

It is generally treated as bullying carried out through the Internet. In many cases it starts in social networks and other virtual communication channels.

Grooming

Type of harassment of minors online. It is a set of deliberate actions on the part of an adult (usually through instant messaging programs or through social networks) to establish friendship links with a child, deceiving him to earn his trust by pretending empathy and other emotions with the child. goal of obtaining a sexual satisfaction by obtaining intimate images of the child or even in preparation for an encounter with the victim.

Phising

It is a form of fraud. The objective is focused on obtaining data, passwords, bank accounts, credit card numbers, identities, etc. From a user and then use them fraudulently.