Teenagers: smartphones and social media do not fully explain the distress

Blaming smartphones and social media alone for adolescent distress is a simple explanation, but an insufficient one. The matter was discussed at a seminar for professionals held on Friday in the theatre of the Ospedale psichiatrico cantonale in Mendrisio, Ticino. The focus fell on a future that is increasingly uncertain and on the fragility of relationships.

Giulio Bertamini, psychologist and researcher at the University of Trento, points to a key issue: the place adolescents can occupy in society. According to Bertamini, young people find no spaces where they have power, and they define themselves by what surrounds them.

What changes above all is the perception of tomorrow. In the past, progress fed expectations of well-being and improvement. Today, according to Bertamini, the future appears shaped by global warming and the return of war. Bertamini describes it as something that closes in and narrows.

The multiplication of possibilities is not enough to offset this uncertainty: many of them have little depth and little meaning, including emotionally. A teenager may thus feel they have more to lose than to gain.

Talking with adults

Michele Mattia, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, states: “La società si è disgregata, non ha più punti di riferimento sicuri” (society has broken apart and no longer has secure reference points). At an age when neurocognitive development is still under way, the lack of reference points can contribute to disorientation. Distress can show up as eating disorders or as withdrawal from relationships.

Mattia describes adolescents who stop seeking contact and wait for adults to approach them. Adults, however, also struggle: according to Mattia, they are afraid to engage, because they are losing their own capacity for relationships. So the withdrawal of young people risks meeting the hesitation of those who could reach out to them.

Bertamini suggests rethinking how adults speak to adolescents. Judgement should be dropped, along with the idea of having a truth to hand over rather than to build together. Listening means leaving room for their experience, without assuming one already has all the answers.

Bertamini acknowledges that smartphones are opening new areas of distress. What remains to be understood is how device use intertwines with the difficulties of growing up. Those who feel stuck may seek refuge in endless scrolling through content or in excessive phone use. Mattia urges people not to demonise social media, while pointing to the risks of inappropriate use.

A mother tells RSI's Quotidiano programme that, in her children's daily use of smartphones, she mainly notices apathy and distraction. If someone asks them something while they are on the phone, they answer in monosyllables or not at all.

Violent and pornographic content worries her, as does the constant comparison with models she considers unsuitable for young people. She cites certain messages conveyed through trap and rap music. In her view, her children tend to take what they hear as true. “Le nostre preoccupazioni sono normali, sono concrete” (our worries are normal, they are real), the mother stresses.

When one of the children was in the first year of scuola media (lower secondary), a teacher discovered a class chat in which the pupils were trading insults. The school asked families to keep an eye on the situation and to talk about it with their children. At home, time limits and blocks on smartphone use were introduced. The children know their parents check the phone: the family intends this as a way to spot any problems and tackle them together.

The question remains open of which spaces society offers young people today to feel like protagonists, and which adults are able to build relationships with them.