José R. Ubieto addresses one of the great social concerns of the moment: digital mental health in adolescence. His new book 'Addicts or Lovers?' (Octahedro) provides strategies for parents and educators to recover damaged ties with those young people who live hanging on their cell phones. This clinical psychologist paints a dark picture about the effects of adolescents' hyperconnection to networks, but leaves room for hope.
Why don't you like people talking about "problematic children"?
Because children have problems, but they are not the problem. They also contribute solutions and inventions because they are all guided by the feeling that one day they will grow up and find their unique solution.
How do the networks satisfy you?
They look, they are looked at, they exhibit themselves, they listen, they are listened to, they shout, they accumulate and retain (music, videos, photos), they vomit insults, they attack, they defame, they recreate the void... All the drive grammar that Freud described and that we already know in the physical world.
They binge watch TikTok, Instagram. They seek immediate satisfaction. But what happens when the initial euphoric effect wears off?
From frenzy they go to vertigo via boredom. Sometimes they feel nauseous and their bodies fail. They feel guilt – and even shame if they talk about it – for that overflowing enjoyment.
What is the difference between addictive use and reasonable use?
Overusing gadgets, misusing them and having an addiction are three different uses. The key measure is not in the number of hours but in everything you deprive yourself of: hobbies, face-to-face meetings, sleep, sports, reading. The addictive is what leads to satiety as in Ferreri's film, 'La Grand Bouffe'. The reasonable thing is to guide yourself by desire, which always leaves intervals and empty spaces where you can find other people and other interests.
Based on what criteria do we establish that there is an addiction, for example, to porn or online games?
When sleep, eating, close relationships, class attendance (or poor performance) and mood are disturbed, it seems like a roller coaster. In short, when you work for the algorithm tirelessly and watch life go by without realizing that you live in it.
You propose replacing the concept of addicts with that of lovers. Because?
Because an addict is enough and more than enough with his object (toxic, bottle, slot machine) while teenagers need it to enjoy and love (dates, forums, Insta). And because naming them that way, pathologizing a lifestyle, disconnects us from them and prevents us from being their interlocutors. Only in 3% can we talk about addiction.
Write: the adolescent feels the loss of a cell phone as a mutilation of a part of his body. So, how are the parents going to take it away!
Taking away their cell phone is not like extracting a tooth. We must help them have spaces free of connectivity: sleep, family meals, outdoor spaces. This is not done in one go and hot, it takes time. What matters is making them want other things, too.
To what extent are the parents responsible for the problem?
Digital technology is not neutral. That works for a hammer, which doesn't talk to you, send you notifications or suggest new uses. Cell phones do do it and they easily hijack your attention. Accusing adolescents and, secondarily, parents of use is hiding that responsibility is multiple and shared: administration, industry and professionals, educators, parents and children and adolescents.
But there are also adult mobile phone junkies.
That is why there are no digital natives, because we are all born from a human desire and that other that receives us provides us with the technology that we then use. Who doesn't like to look at, show off, touch the screen (150 times a day) or fall asleep to its sounds?
Faced with the loss of paternal authority, families give up or give up on 're-educating' their children. What are the consequences of having transferred that authority from the father to the cell phone?
The first is that we see how knowledge has been transferred to digital, and even more so now with AI. We carry it in our pockets and trust more and more in its prescriptions and advice. We assume an authority that we no longer grant to some adults. We even delegate specifically human acts and decisions to it (sexuality, political choices, lifestyles). Beliefs in traditional formulas are in decline.
You say in the book that you talk to teenagers and that many complain, not so much about the physical absence of the adult, but that "they are there, but they don't talk to us."
And they are right in the fact that you can be with someone and leave them alone with their screens, with their gadgets. It takes more than presence. Accompaniment involves giving a place to the adolescent's uniqueness.
Networks make them more narcissistic and lonelier people. At what point is that bad for your mental health?
Health is knowing how to be with others and putting your body in that social bond. When the virtual replaces the in-person, instead of evoking it as a temporary solution, it disconnects us from ourselves and makes us psychologically more vulnerable. The idolatry of the self, so fashionable in some famous people, is the culmination of ignorance of oneself: we don't even know who is behind the image, its wild side, as Lou Reed would say.
There is currently an epidemic of eating disorders and teenage suicides. Even Meta has acknowledged that it "aggravates the body image problems of one in three adolescent women." What are they looking for by self-harm?
Self-harm is the anxiolytic of adolescents: they serve to cut off the anguish that invades them or give them vitality when their spirits decline. The countless pages and videos of self-harm confirm their decision and provide them with ideas. But the ultimate decision is yours.
Lack of sleep, fewer meetings with friends, fewer dates, less sex, more masturbation, more feeling of loneliness, more symptoms of depression... What would be the guidelines to go back?
I hope that it will not take long for us to become collectively aware of the need to regulate an absorbing and intrusive hybrid world. Not to denigrate technology, and even less to ignore it, but to follow Heidegger's advice to embrace the mysteries of it without giving up our principles (equity, privacy, respect, solidarity). That affects us all and requires digital disconnection guidelines that I specify in the book.
From the lack of libido (due to the fear of not measuring up) to the initiation of risky behaviors, such as violence and harassment. When do the effects of sensory oversaturation have irreparable consequences?
The only irreversible thing is death, we can change the rest if we maintain our desire to live and our bond with others. Human beings want authenticity and, although they are attracted to digital trompe-l'oeil, they will always appreciate hand-to-hand more. This allows us to better deal with fears and their effects: violence, risks...
According to his experience, “phygital reality” (digital physics) favors a lack of attention, which can become pathological. How to recover it?
The hijacking of our attention is already a clear fact and affects us all: we read less and worse, we lose the skills to converse face to face and we reject the thought that arises from boredom because we consider it a waste of time. That is pathological because of its intimate disconnection. Recovering it means relearning the conversation, a topic about which I propose some keys in the book.
There are those who propose banning cell phones before the age of 16. What do you think?
The illusion of prohibiting ignores psychic reality because you cannot prohibit the drive (the desire to look or be looked at), only find more interesting and cooperative destinations for it. The same week that France enacted its second law to ban cell phones in schools, its prime minister took selfies with students and teachers at a high school, encouraged by excited parents.
And in schools?
What can and should be done, both in the family and at school, is to limit its use and firmly establish protected spaces free of connectivity: meals, sleep, family rituals, reflective work, patios. Only in this way will they discover other pleasures and experiences. And they will thank us. Eton and many other schools already do it and do very well.
Teaching them to converse seems even easier than teaching them to be bored...
Boredom is the beginning of the solution, it fills voids. And conversation is our most valuable asset as speaking beings. From there arise cooperative, loving, intellectual, and joyful bonds. It is necessary to learn it so that it is not just blah blah blah and it has its ingredients: active listening, humor, surprise, nonsense and poetry.
