SOCIAL MEDIA IS A BLESSING DURING CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
If we weren’t already addicted to our digital devices before the COVID-19 pandemic, they have become a critical lifeline to the outside world during the last two weeks of social isolation.
Going online is a source of critical information, a necessary diversion and a conduit to human contact. For adults and children alike, life has now moved into the virtual realm. Many workers are telecommuting and kids lucky enough to have computers, tablets or smartphones are trying to compensate for the closure of schools on the internet.
Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s director of public health, even prescribed online socializing for teens to prevent them from partying and propagating COVID-19. But even the youngest children are taking to Skype to talk with grandparents they can no longer visit or to have virtual playdates with friends they can’t see in person.
Social media has been a blessing in this moment of crisis. But could it also be a curse, over the long term — especially for young people?
Dr. Jeffrey Derevensky, chair of the department of educational and counselling psychology at Mcgill University, said this is a watershed moment where kids are being actively and rapidly hustled online.
“The government is actually encouraging this for social distancing, the school system’s going to be encouraging us to do things more remotely and online. University is now going online,” he said. “So we’re going to see a generation of individuals that are linked and hooked to their computers and their cellphones and their smartphones.”
While Derevensky said there are many “outstanding” e-learning tools, the rapid and unexpected shift to e-living may very well come with downsides.
There were already concerns for the generation that has come of age with the smartphone that their dependence on devices is making them unhealthy, unhappy and stupid. Preliminary research conducted in recent years has shown that young adults today go out less, drink less and are less likely to die in car accidents or other mishaps than their predecessors because they live so much of their social lives online. But igen, as they are commonly called, have higher rates of depression and anxiety and may be more prone to suicide.
Derevensky, a professor in the department of psychiatry and an expert on digital behaviour, has worked on an international task force for the World Health Organization that examined the effects of online gaming on youth.
“We have kids who are hooked on gaming, who have a real addiction and have real difficulty turning off their games,” he said. “They have limited social skills and so I think this is one of the things we as a society have to look at. It has to do with finding balance and setting rules.”
Before the spread of coronavirus, there were already concerns about the amount of time kids were spending glued to screens. Now, with everyone hunkered down at home, it seems some of the limits set by many parents have been removed. In the last two weeks, everyone is spending exponentially more time online. And children, especially, are being unleashed into a brave new world neither they nor their parents are prepared for.
When a handful of kids in my daughters’ class started Grade 4 with smartphones last fall, I was among those calling on the school to impose strict rules. I cringed at putting such powerful tools in the hands of kids so young.
But, ready or not, I’ve been forced to do an about-face out of necessity. If my nine-year-old couldn’t text, video chat or email her friends right now, she would be lonely and left out. If my fouryear-old couldn’t have virtual playdates on Facetime she, too, would be sad and depressed.
Cutting off their contact during this time of isolation is not an option. But trying to set reasonable limits is a work in progress. And keeping up with a dizzying array of apps, games and programs is a baptism by fire. We’ve barely had time to instil what it means to be a good digital citizen, offer tips for avoiding the dangers that lurk on the internet or discuss the scourge of online bullying.
“There’s been an entire shift in terms of the way children are now interacting,” Derevensky said. “And this is going to eventually become problematic when they go back to the old way of interacting.”
But will our kids ever really go back to the old way of interacting? Or is the genie out of the bottle for good? Will we ever prise potent and pleasurable technology out of our children’s hands?
“We’re going to have to stuff that genie back with a lot of difficulty,” Derevensky warned, “because young people enjoy doing these things, they like interacting online.”
This rapid shift to the digital sphere may be one of the myriad ways COVID-19 forever reshapes our lives.