We are going through days where we are more intertwined with technology than ever before due to the pandemic we are experiencing around the world. In this process, we have to use digital channels to meet our needs, from the shopping we do to our entire lifestyle, as well as our working life. In my previous article on this subject, I touched on such special situations and stated that we may have to benefit from technology in these situations. However, when these days pass and we continue our lives normally, what I wrote in my article titled "DIGITAL CHILDREN OF DIGITAL PARENTS-1" will continue to be valid.
Before starting this part of the article series, it is useful to remind you of something. My aim is not to say that your children should not watch television or play games. The purpose of this article is to express why and how our brain is affected by negative content. Let's see what limits we can set for our children and how we can protect them from these negative effects.
As you all know, there are programs on television such as documentaries and educational cartoons, as well as content containing violence and negative examples. In order to protect our children from negative effects, it is necessary to set limits on screen time and control the content they encounter.
So why do the contents in the virtual world negatively affect us? In order to understand why it negatively affects us, it is useful to first understand the functioning of our brain correctly. First of all, our brain is an organ that is both adaptive (adapts to changing conditions, adapts to changing conditions) and can be fooled. Adaptation is an extremely important feature for us to survive and function in changing conditions. To give a current example, individuals who can adapt to epidemic conditions, pay attention to their hygiene and have the patience to stay at home continue to stay away from the disease and survive. Here too, there is an adaptation mechanism developed against changing conditions. However, this adaptation situation can create some negative and disruptive effects as the virtual world plays with your perceptions. For example, let's think of individuals who are constantly in front of the screen and these individuals watch TV series containing violence and brutality. Whether it's watching movies or negative news. After a while, we begin to see that people exposed to these contents become more angry and tense, and act less thoughtfully. However, the most important point here is that although they have difficulty watching violent content at first, their brains begin to get used to this situation and do not overreact as much as they did at first. Because the brain has started to get used to those contents and see them normally. This means that if the brain sees these as normal, it is more likely to start behaving in the same way under appropriate conditions and will remain unresponsive to violence. Have you ever noticed? We encounter so much negative content in the main news bulletins, but we react instantly and then continue our lives where we left off. Because we are constantly exposed to such events and our brain gets used to this situation, it keeps the reaction time and size very limited. In other words, we are desensitized to violence and crime.
You go through the same process when you buy something new. When you reach the person or object you really want to reach, you first experience extreme pleasure, and then you create a process that leads to unresponsiveness and even disregard. Because if your brain continued to give the same reaction as the first day every time, it would be extremely tiring for you.
This situation needs to be examined further for children. Because children are exposed to such negative content, they are affected faster and more intensely than adults. One of the important reasons for this is that early children (0-5 years old) do not have the mental skills to adequately distinguish the virtual and real world. To put it very roughly, children believe that the movies or TV series they watch really happened. In previous years, the news of a child jumping down thinking he was a Pokemon is one of the good examples of how this distinction has not been developed. Afterwards, the cartoon was banned in our country.
Research shows that the brains of children, adolescents and adults who are exposed to negative content, even if not at an early age and even if they distinguish between real and virtual, begin to accept those contents as real, see them as normal and behave accordingly. Simply put, when you watch a movie, you experience your emotions as if the events were really happening. You become happy, sad, angry or afraid. Even if your logic knows that the movie or TV series is not real, your subconscious accepts it as if it were real, so you experience those emotions and sometimes you cannot control them. What did I say? The brain is a foolable organ. In this case, constantly being exposed to negative situations will cause your brain to be convinced that you are really living in that situation and weaken your own perception of reality. The weakening of the perception of reality will affect your thoughts, decision-making processes, behaviors, in short, everything that makes us who we are.
Children learn by taking a model and behave accordingly. The people they take as models may be parents, or they may be stronger and dominant characters. For this reason, it is always useful to check what our children are watching. Because children are not born with the ability to distinguish right from wrong. By observing the environment, their behavior is shaped according to their parents' teachings. However, TV and movie characters are more impressive than their parents, and the negative elements they are exposed to may be more dominant than their parents' influence on them. Especially adolescents who seek to prove themselves, explore their inner world, and seek acceptance may be extremely prone to imitate the behavior of such negative characters. If you remember, especially in the early 2000s, the trend of mafia TV series started, and teenagers who were influenced by these TV series started to imitate the lines and behaviors in them.
Of course, negative elements are not only found in TV series and movies. Digital games, which have become almost an addiction today, also have an extremely important impact. In addition, the control of the virtual character there is in the hands of a real person. It causes people to identify with each other more easily. In this case, it is possible to be influenced by games much faster than TV series and movies. Moreover, since there is no such thing as permanent death in games, and since there are incentives and rewards for crimes (skipping a level by killing someone, earning money), let alone punishment for the crimes committed, our perception of reality is much more distorted. In other words, our brain pushes us to take risks and behave by believing that violence is a necessary situation, almost without fear of death. Naturally, the result of these actions is a great drama.
I would like to mention something here. The situations I mentioned in my article may not have the same effect on every individual. In other words, there is no rule that every individual who encounters negative images and events on the screen commits a crime. However, it will push everyone, more or less, to behave outside of what they should without realizing it. It will greatly increase the likelihood of developing dangerous behavior, especially for individuals who may be more prone to violence due to biological and environmental factors. Therefore, it is important to keep our children and ourselves away from such content as much as possible, and at least make them question the negative behaviors they encounter while being around them. For example, when you encounter characters harming each other while watching cartoons, you can push your children to question them by asking questions such as "Do you think this behavior is right?", "How should they behave?" Therefore, be careful to be around them while they are sitting in front of the screen.
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