Internet, one of the keys to happiness for young people
Being happy is something important for good developing of people, although it is not exactly easy to achieve. Finding that emotional health point is something that has to be worked on day after day and in which many factors come into play. This concept is subjective and to open the door that hides this feeling there are several keys.
There are those who believe that to be happy it is necessary to possess certain goods. For example, the new generations relate their emotional well-being with the fact of having or not connecting to Internet. This is reflected in the data of the PISA 2015 report, which also includes the evaluations of the youngest ones about their state of mind.
Lack of internet: anxiety
Connect to Internet is seen by young people in Spain as a basic requirement to achieve happiness. Seven out of ten students say that if they do not have access to the network, they would feel really bad and experience great anxiety. Shows the importance of the web world for these generations is the time they devote to the virtual universe.
According to these data, as a rule a young man about three hours a day connected to the internet, a time that increases on Saturdays and Sundays to exceed three and a half hours. There are also "extreme users", those who dedicate six hours each day to the network, these young people make up 22% of the total of those interviewed in this study.
This situation of emotional dependence on the internet causes young people to see their academic level. The time students dedicate to the network makes their grades go down and shows how the "extreme users" in Spain got a score 35 points below in the Science tests in the PISA 2015 report.
Less integration in class
The data from this study also reveal that young people who use the Internet the most, they integrate worse in the school environment. These adolescents tend to participate less in class, later arrive at their centers and tend to have a high rate of school absenteeism. The solution? To break the internet-happiness relationship and make people understand that there are other ways to obtain emotional well-being.
Sport, hanging out with friends, striving to meet the goals marked, participate in extracurricular activities that favor their personal development. All these points should be those that mark the happiness of the students, and not their connection to the internet. Access to the network must be exposed as a tool to access information and other services, but never as something to obtain emotional stability.
The happiness-internet relationship can be understood if one takes into account that the network is sometimes the only socializing element that young people have. But this conception is false, as stated in the 38th Congress of Associations of Parents of Students of the Schools of Promotion of Teaching Centers. In this event it was highlighted that "800 contacts in social networks are not 800 real friends".
The message flow that is transferred on these platforms is abysmal and can give the impression of speaking with a large number of people. From small you have to teach the value of true friendship, that which can have the key to happiness. This link is to spend time with real people and not virtual.
Damián Montero
