INTERDISCIPLINARY LESSON

Lesson and workshop on mobile and social networks addictions

This lesson and workshop has been run by Amalgama, a center that help many young people to get over addictions in Catalonia.

Duration: 3 hours

Subjects: Sociology/ Science/ Catalan/ Spanish/ English/ PE (body language)

The main content of the lesson is the following:

An addiction may be considered so when somebody is dependent and creates tolerance on a substance or something. When the addiction is on something other than a substance, we may talk about behavioral addiction, for example on mobiles, play station, sport, food, shopping,…

There are 3 kinds of dependence:

1. Physical; when the body asks for that substance
2. Psychological: when remembering the pleasure we get with that.
3. Social: the fact of belonging to a group and be accepted

Among  teenagers, the most important dependence is the social one, and they become “addicted” to friends.

How many hours do a person have to spend in front of a screen to be considered addictive, according to experts? Some studies say that spending 3 hours in front of a screen is considered dependance.

Practical exercise with our students: they were told to leave the mobile in a box during the lesson. One of our students refused to leave it, she said she just didn’t want to. Another student said she doesn’t even have a mobile. Most of the other students said they can leave it because they are at school, otherwise they wouldn’t leave it because it’s very important for them.

The lesson goes on by analyzing the functions of a mobile: call, arrange meetings, navigate, communicate with others, listen to music,… 

So, some of the functions are positive. But what about the negative ones? so, the students are asked: Are teenagers today different from the ones some years ago?

Their answers were varied.

The psychologist told them about 2 different factors:  

• Endogenic factors: No changes between present and old generations. An example is the sentence “teenagers are snappy, arrogant, rude…”, and students have been asked how old they thought the sentence is. Many said from 5 years ago, 10 years ago,… but it was actually said by Cicero on the 5th C bC.
• Exogenous factors: with radical changes. Our teenagers today are sons and daughters of internet, citizens from a digital era”

Students are asked : What do you watch on internet?

Answers: wikipedia, unnecessary things, and mostly funny things, nice things, ways to get connected to the others.

Then the students are informed about the risk called “room on line”: those who don’t need to leave the room so as to be connected to others. So, the risks are: they don’t go out, they get isolated, their brain doesn’t work properly,… 

Students are told about the boys Hikikomori: they never leave their room, not even to go to the toilet.

Students are given an article about the Bunker Generation: they read it and comment on the content. 

http://www.sobrepantalles.net/2010/11/la-generacion-del-bunker/

That is an article in Spanish from the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Students are asked the question:

What are the ICT tools? (technology and information tools)

Students answer: facebook, instagram, tweeter, snapshot, instagram, whasapp, telegram, twenty,… Most students agree that they hardly ever use facebook now, they mostly use instagram.

After this, students are asked to say positive aspects of these tools: unlimited source of information, new ways to communicate, strengthen the group links, empower social links, 

Next, the phycologist talks about the other many positive aspects of these tools (empower new abilities, find people one can have common interests, finding a job …) as well as the negative ones (pornography, violence, no need of real friends,.… ), so students are asked to think about these.

Usually, when this use becomes an addiction, a teenager may have the following behavior: decrease in the academic results, usually wants to be alone, doesn’t want to go out with friends, eating disorders, not interested in sport …).

Some personalities have more probabilities to fall on an addiction,  also when somebody has to face social problems, isolation, low self-esteem,…) 

1. The first activity to do after the lesson is to answer a questionnaire on the information given. (20 minutes)

2. The second activity is: students are asked to prepare a role-play.  They have to write a story (in Catalan and in English) in groups: a story with a mother, a father and a son / daughter. They have to act the story before the other students.

3. Each student will choose the story he/she has seen and will write a summary in Spanish.

4. In the English class: they will act the role-play again in English, and this will be recorded and filmed so as to upload them on the school webpage.