Last week, students of the student parliament implemented a project called “Phone detox” as part of Children’s Week and Mental Health Day. The one-day challenge aimed to encourage participants not to use mobile phones, in order to become aware of their level of dependence on digital devices. The initiator of the project, as well as the coordinator, was student IV2 Katarina Nikolić, while Marta Živojnov lll3, Kalina Jakšić lll3, Aleksandra Mršić IV1, with the support of professor Snežana Đenić, also participated in the actual implementation.
The following participated in the challenge: Davor Gašparević IV2, Mila Davidov IV2, Vukašin Žarkov IV2, Stanko Dolovac III1, Aleksandra Mršić IV1, Danilo Stefanović I4, Stefan Mitrović I4, Marta Živojnov III3, Andreas Mohan III5
Professor Snežana Đenić added:
“Several years ago, an extensive survey was conducted in 60 schools in the territory of Serbia on the frequency and ways of using the Internet on a sample of students aged 9 to 17 (a total of 1150 respondents). The survey showed that students spend on the Internet, on average, more than 3 hours a day, the oldest respondents up to 4 and a half hours, while that number reaches as much as 7 hours on weekends. It should also be noted that as many as 74% of them declared that they have a profile on social networks or platforms for playing video games. .
Also, last year, research was conducted in 14 EU countries on how digital devices affect students’ attention, concentration and achievement. In this study, it was observed that “smartphones” are a risk factor, because they significantly reduce attention, especially if they are used in class. Continuous, multi-hour use of mobile phones in early childhood and pre-adolescence negatively affects the natural cognitive development of children, leading to a decrease in concentration, memory, dialectical ability and critical thinking.
In some studies, a negative impact on social interactions in the real world, as well as on the mental health of not only children and young people, but also the general population, has been observed. All of the above are enough reasons to wonder whether digital technologies are just a good servant or increasingly becoming a bad master.
Bearing all this in mind, the real picture of the present unfortunately does not give hope that in the near future the trend of using digital technologies will suddenly change and decline, nor is it possible to completely isolate children, especially teenagers, from the digital world. However, what can be done is to educate children and young people about how to protect themselves from the potential dangers that being in the online world brings, but also to offer them quality educational and entertainment content, suitable for their age and needs in the offline world, which is also the idea of the whole “Phone detox” challenge. “