The other side of the screens .. How our children have become more unhappy?

Farida Ahmed

Today's children are different from those of previous generations. Their ideas, interests and lifestyles are different, and they feel more open and mature than previous generations.

Older generations are often seen as more fortunate than them. The vastness of life has expanded and given them everything, from sophistication, possibilities and technology, as well as more modern and more affordable clothes. simplicity.

Today's children are certainly different from the previous days, because they are more miserable than the children 25 years ago.

Low happiness rates
Excessive use of social media today is a major cause of growing loneliness, disruption of friendship and dissatisfaction, and a higher proportion of children aged 10 to 15 are generally dissatisfied with their lives for the first time since the release of the Good Childhood Annual Report. 2009.

The current annual report, which is based on a regular survey of some 2,400 families and a study of 40,000 other British families, revealed a significant drop in satisfaction with friends and school among boys and girls alike and an increase in unhappiness among boys about their appearance and bullying at school. More than 200,000 children in the UK are unhappy.

Every year, the rate of happiness among children gradually falls to its lowest level, with happiness with friends falling from an average of 8.99 out of 10 in 2009-2010 to 8.59 last year. 2.8% of the children surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their friends. The report also found that 11.8% were dissatisfied with the school, the highest level since the survey began.

Technology and unhappiness
The literature on psychotherapy suggests that there is a link between depression and technology, which may be non-causal, but the impact of social media and smartphone use has been linked to increased depression rates among children and adolescents aged 13 to 18.

A US study of researchers at the University of San Diego and Florida linked the increased symptoms of depression and suicide rates among adolescents to the time of exposure to modern media and screens. The study reported a 33% increase in depression symptoms between 2010 and 2015.In the same period, the suicide rate for girls in This age group is 65% and is linked to figures indicating that 92% of children and adolescents have a smartphone at the same time.

What "screens" do with children
The principal investigator of the American study, Jean Twingy, a psychologist at the University of San Diego, notes that there are differences in the lives of current adolescents and young people, compared to previous generations, make them more unhappy as they spend much less time communicating with their peers in person and more time to communicate electronically, Mainly through social media making them feel social isolation.

Young people who spend more than two hours a day on social media are more likely to report mental disorders, according to Time magazine. Seeing friends constantly on vacation or enjoying can make young people feel that others enjoy life compared to them. That will strengthen the position of "comparison and despair."

Loss of self-confidence is one of the most negative impacts of social media sites on children and adolescents. The Instagram image-based platform has the worst social network for mental health, according to the Royal Society of Public Health survey published in Time magazine.

Children and adolescents, even adults, are being bullied on Instagram because of their selfies, making them feel dissatisfied with their appearance and bodies, creating feelings of low self-esteem and thus showing symptoms of unhappiness and depression.

A simple, childless complexity and technology, despite its poverty, seems to have avoided a quarter of a century of much of the stress and bad psychological consequences of today's children, yet they are still the envy of older generations.