How safe are our kids using social media and the internet?
KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE IN THE DIGITAL AGE IS A DAUNTING CHALLENGE FOR PARENTS. MARIA
PEPPER TALKS TO MEDIA MINDFULLY FOUNDER IVAYLO KALTCHEV ABOUT THE PITFALLS OF SOCIAL MEDIA, WHILE SIMON BOURKE REPORTS FROM AN FDYS SEMINAR THAT SHONE A LIGHT FOR PARENTS ON THE DARKER SIDE OF THE INTERNET
ENGAGING with social media can cause anxiety in children which they need techniques to deal with, according to Ivaylo Kaltchev who runs a media awareness programme for schools and community groups called Media Mindfully.
‘I set it up because I saw what was happening to my own children and the effect of media on them, how they were taking in media messages like a sponge without any critical thinking about what was going on’, said Ivaylo, a native of Bulgaria who has been living in Wexford for the past two decades.
An honours graduate in Media Production Management from Dublin City University, he set up Media Mindfully, based at Wexford Enterprise, last year, and conducts courses for children and adults.
‘ The most important thing for me is that media is not only what we see on television, in the newspapers or on the internet. Media is communication, a way of living, it’s how the world operates. It’s like a jungle and you need to find a safe path through it.’
Ivaylo said operating in the virtual world of social media can affect children on different levels. ‘ They can lose the ability to communicate face to face. The natural connection is lost because they live in a virtual reality, a fake reality’.
‘ There are psychological effects including increased anxiety and decreased empathy and the normalising of violence. Seventy-five per cent of video games in the world are violent. How we learn is through repetition. If we repeat a certain movement or behaviour, it becomes normal’.
‘Scientists and psychologists agree that social media and video games are like a drug with the same danger of addiction.’
‘In playing video games, there is a momentum reward when they win but when they lose, that is a different thing. They want to go back and play again to experience the good feeling. The dopamine in their brain is high, they can’t control it. That’s what causes the anxiety’.
‘With social media, it’s the number of likes they get on a photo that they have posted. That is the reward. If they don’t get the number of likes they feel they need, they are not evaluated and they start to feel down and this can lead to depression’.
When social media first came on the scene about 10 years ago with platforms such as Bebo, people found it amazing, he said, but there was a choice involved in whether to participate or not.
But nowadays, for young people from the age of 15 upwards, there is an absolute pressure to be on social media. ‘If not, you will be excluded from the group. You have to be on social media to be part of the circle’, he said.
All the children that Media Mindfully encounters have mobile phones and most of them, about 95%, are on social media.
There is a risk of children losing their natural creativity as a result of technology, according to Ivaylo. ‘When I think about my childhood in Bulgaria, we had to create games and toys for ourselves. Today, everything that children need can be found on a search engine.
They don’t have the patience. If I need something, Google Assist will tell me’, he said.
‘‘Look at a video on Youtube and you’ll notice that the images change very quickly because they can’t wait around. Or watch a young person flicking through images on their phone and witness the attention span. They don’t have the patience to examine and analyse what they are seeing’.
There is no escaping technology which is set to continue and to advance but the only hope we have is to learn how to be mindful of it, according to Ivaylo and that is why he established Media Mindfully.
‘If we don’t learn how the world of technology and media operates, we won’t be mindful when engaging with it. It’s like trying to read without learning the alphabet’.
Media Mindfully offers a media awareness programme, aimed at increasing media literacy in people of all ages and helping to create a more positive psychology along with wellness practices and better life skills.
Ivaylo helps participants to understand what media is and how it affects our lives, the impact of social media on our behaviour and how we can protect ourselves from negative influences while an experienced mindfulness practitioner working with him, shows techniques in how to deal with anxiety arising from social media, gaming and internet use.
‘Children do understand what we are saying. We explain to them why they may feel a certain way, how to recognise the good feelings and the down feelings. We are trying to make them aware, to know that if they face something, that they have to have that critical thinking’, said Ivaylo.
Many parents are lagging behind their children in their knowledge of social media he said.
‘Because social media is new, parents are not aware of everything that is happening. Some parents will give their child the latest phone without fully realising that it is not just a phone but a very powerful small computer.’
‘Also, some parents are addicted to the phone and to social media themselves. They don’t see that there is anything wrong with it. They will even help their children sign in to a website’.
In order to explain how people can present images on social media
SOME PARENTS WILL GIVE THEIR CHILD THE LATEST PHONE WITHOUT FULLY REALISING THAT IT IS NOT JUST A PHONE BUT A VERY POWERFUL SMALL COMPUTER
which are very different to their real selves, Ivaylo shows children a video illustrating the creation of a false image, using features from seven or eight different celebrities.
‘People are presenting the best of the best of themselves and others looking at it are made to feel inadequate and to feel that they must aspire to this kind of image too. Media creates a kind of monster. It tells us that materialistic things such as your clothing and your phone are more important than your human value’.
Ivaylo said he hopes that by the end of each course, the students will have gained a better understanding of what media is and a greater awareness of the impact of social media on their behaviour along with the awareness and knowledge to create a positive mindset around themselves in the media environment.Students are given ‘Watch Outs’ to enable them to identify situations where they or their friends may be vulnerable and where to go for help. Summing up the ethos of Media Mindfully, he quoted the late American author Dr. Wayne Dyer: ‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’. Media Mindfully can be contacted on info@mediamindfully.ie.