Children are obsessed with the Internet, and as a parent, you to the child both hard and soft are not effective, then, may wish to do the psychologist left “homework”
A mother’s confession An An (pseudonym) mother: my child in the city to read the first year of high school, before high school, his academic performance has been in the middle of the upper, all aspects of performance is good. After entering high school, An An got hooked on “World of Warcraft” under the influence of his friends, and every day when he came home from evening study, he would play for a while before going to bed, sometimes even until 1 am. After his father and I found out, we tried to persuade him for many times, but it was not effective. In order to avoid An’s excessive addiction to online games, we decided to let him live in school. However, An An used his lunch break to play with his classmates at the Internet cafe outside. As soon as he came home from school on weekends, he rushed to play games online. After the summer vacation, An An was also on the Internet all day long. We had no choice but to cut off the Internet connection at home. When we couldn’t get online at home, An An was so anxious that he sometimes sneaked off to Internet cafes to go online. We had no choice but to connect to the Internet again because we were worried that An An would run away from home like other children. Since An An got hooked on online games, not only did his academic performance drop, but his temper also grew and he often ignored us, which made us very worried. How did the child become addicted to the Internet?
Reporter: I believe we all understand the harm of Internet addiction, but more people are concerned about how to help young children to quit Internet addiction. Before discussing this topic, I would like to ask why there are so many young children addicted to the Internet?
Feng Jincai: Yes, to solve the problem we have to analyze the reason why the problem happens. Why are so many children addicted to the Internet? The reason is very simple, mainly because the Internet meets certain needs of people. These needs are multifaceted, and here I mainly point out three common ones: online chatting, online games and online pornography.
Internet addiction is just a symptom, there are realistic factors behind internet addiction, that is, these needs of children are not satisfied or missing in real life. The first two can be attributed to factors such as lack of friends, care, self-confidence, respect, sense of worth, and the pursuit of pleasure and escape from stress. Internet pornography, on the other hand, is related to the physiological needs of teenagers, including the exploration of the mystery of sex and the ignorance of sex.
Reporter: To further analyze this issue, what causes the lack of these needs of children?
Feng Jincai: There are many factors, including family, school education, social and cultural factors and adolescent personality characteristics. For example, schools promote exam-oriented education, and children are deep in the pressure of studying, passively studying and taking exams, so that children’s other interests are not developed, while online games provide a platform for them to “show themselves”, and computers do not “scold” children and give them pressure. Children are in adolescence, their physiology is changing, and their curiosity about sex is not answered reasonably and scientifically, so they turn to the Internet and are poisoned by the Internet pornography culture. These factors are tedious to analyze, but most of the children’s Internet addiction occurs with family factors.
Relatively speaking, there are five types of families in which children are prone to Internet addiction. One is the controlling family, this kind of family mother is strong, correspondingly, the child fatherhood education is missing or too weak, resulting in the child lack of responsibility, low social skills, social adaptability is also poor, lack of friends. The second is a strict family, which is the opposite of a controlling family, where the father is in a strong position and the child is prone to rebelliousness, paranoia and insecurity. The third is the coddling family, where the child is overly spoiled and does not have a proper self-identity, and is prone to develop an egoistic personality and poor interpersonal relationships. Fourth, neglectful families, in which parents lack care for their children, and children lack love, respect and communication, and do not feel safe. Fifth is the broken family, that is, the parents have a disharmonious relationship, or even divorced, etc.
Usually, most children with Internet addiction are withdrawn and introverted, have poor social skills, low self-worth, irritability, and low self-esteem.
Help children to quit the Internet addiction in the “detachment” rather than “blocking”
Reporter: How can you tell if your child is addicted to the Internet?
Feng Jincai: Internet addiction is mainly manifested as: a sense of psychological dependence on the Internet, constantly increasing the time spent online; getting pleasure and satisfaction from the act of surfing the Internet, when not online, there are different degrees of anxiety, irritability, depression, etc.; life is more autistic, not good or unwilling to interact with others; on the Internet to escape from real-life worries and emotional problems.
In the current information age, many people rely on the Internet for information and exchange of information, which is different from Internet addiction.
Reporter: In real life, many parents are anxious and worried about their children’s Internet addiction.
Feng Jincai: First of all, I need to tell you a general principle of treatment, that is, the treatment of Internet addiction focuses on “dredging” rather than “blocking”. Many parents find that their children love to play games on the Internet, so they unplug the computer cable at home, or simply do not allow their children to touch the computer, forcibly isolating them from the Internet, but the result is that children secretly go to Internet cafes to play games, or even run away from home. It has been proven that the “blocking” method does not work and can even bring more serious consequences.
There are many ways to treat Internet addiction, such as simple psychotherapy, medication and the ruler beating method. The method that I agree with is to focus on psychological treatment, supplemented by medication. Medication is not yet available specifically for the treatment of Internet addiction. Medication is mainly used to treat patients with psychiatric symptoms of Internet addiction, such as anxiety disorder and depression.
According to the principle of demand deficiency mentioned earlier, to cure Internet addiction, the main thing is to find the root cause of the formation of Internet addiction, and we should start from three aspects: individual, family and society, among which, solving family problems is especially crucial. As mentioned before, a lot of Internet addiction disorders are the manifestation of family dysfunction. Therefore, the problem that family therapy has to deal with is to correct and adjust the harmonious relationship between family members, and through the joint efforts of family members, change the family dynamics mechanism from which Internet addiction disorders arise, so that children can feel real joy and happiness in the real world and make the symptoms disappear.
Of course, for some serious Internet addiction patients who are caught up in the Internet and cannot extricate themselves, they need to be sent to a cessation center or a professional psychological institution for “compulsive treatment”.
You may want to do the “homework” left by psychologists
Reporter: Can you provide some practical ways to help children and families with Internet addiction to kick the habit?
Feng Jincai: We can recommend a systemic family therapy approach, which is to identify the problems in family rules and family communication patterns around the symptoms and “disturb” them, thus contributing to the disappearance of the symptoms. Week One Assignment: The Paradox Intervention requires parents to spend at least one hour a day recording what their child has done wrong or what they are unhappy about, writing at least 1,000 words per entry and preparing to scold the child beforehand, waiting until the weekend to focus on scolding the child for half a day. The purpose of this is to deliberately exaggerate and amplify the parents’ faulty communication patterns to the extent that the parents will find them absurd, and thus come to the realization that the child’s problems stem from some aspect of the family’s education, thus acting as a “brake”. If the parent’s “instructions” are disobeyed by the child, it will also help the parent to stop the pathological family communication pattern in time.
The second week of homework: single and double day homework method Parents can discuss with their children a time when they are allowed to go online, for example, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but not at other times. During the time your child is allowed to go online, you can let him go wild, but family members should show indifference to him. During the time when the child is not allowed to go online, the family members should treat him in the opposite way and take care of him with enthusiasm. Through this strong contrast, the child will experience the bad effects of using the computer on himself and feel the care and support of his parents. If parents take the opportunity to educate their children about the Internet, they will be able to control the time they spend on the Internet.
The third week’s homework: the bookkeeping method In the premise of asking children to consciously control the time they use the computer, help their parents do more housework, and care about their parents’ lives, parents and children should prepare a notebook to record the time their children spend online every day, the length of each Internet session, what they do online, and the progress and good performance of their children. Parents and children should always compare their respective records and help the child analyze the online journey so that he can realize his daily online status and life status instead of blindly indulging in the Internet.
The above is just one of the tips in the systemic family therapy method, individuals are different, for different families, different symptoms to take different methods, the so-called “a key to open a lock”, will really be able to achieve the target.
In addition, the following methods can be adopted.
Do not place the computer in the child’s bedroom.
The placement of the computer is also an important part of quitting your child’s Internet addiction. Parents should not place the computer in the child’s room, so that once the child closes the bedroom door, the parents do not know whether the child is studying or playing games. It is recommended that the computer be placed in the living room, or study, because these places are freely accessible to everyone, and children have concerns if they are playing games or browsing bad information, and the length of time on the Internet is bound to be controlled.
Encourage your child to participate in more group activities. Children who are addicted to the Internet are more self-absorbed and reluctant to socialize. Increasing group activities not only cultivates children’s interests in various areas and diverts their attention, but also helps them to exercise their ability to interact with others, so that they can get a sense of belonging to a group and a sense of individual acceptance in the process. At the same time, the family should also provide the child with more opportunities to “participate in politics” and cultivate their care for the family, parents timely encouragement and appreciation, in order to increase the child’s sense of responsibility and mission, to give him a platform to reflect his self-worth.
All in all, the treatment of Internet addiction is a systematic process that involves many factors, which cannot be described in detail here, and it is recommended that you seek help from a professional psychologist if you have any problems.
Terminology explanation
Internet addiction syndrome: It is a modern and new form of mental illness. Because of the lack of social communication and interpersonal communication, patients treat the Internet world as real life, detach themselves from the times, and have no common language with others, thus experiencing symptoms such as loneliness and anxiety, depression, slow thinking, lower self-evaluation, and even suicidal thoughts and behaviors in severe cases. Link.
The adverse effects of Internet addiction on adolescents Psychological aspects. Patients are psychologically compulsively dependent on the Internet, and once they stop, the urge to go online prevents them from engaging in other activities and work. When studying, memory is not concentrated, not lasting, memory loss, due to long-term visual impact on thinking, logical thinking activities are sluggish, over time the patient only addicted to the virtual world and ignore the daily work.
Physical aspects. Long-term addiction to the Internet can lead to vision loss, shoulder and back muscle strain, biological clock disorders, sleep rhythm disorders, loss of appetite, indigestion, weight loss, eating too much and too little activity leads to obesity, physical fitness, immune function decline, stop the Internet insomnia, headaches, inattention, indigestion, nausea and anorexia, weight loss. Adolescents are in the critical period of physical development, and these problems can seriously hinder their healthy growth. They are less interested in learning and living, distant from reality, indifferent, and lacking a sense of time; because they cannot face reality, they are often in a psychological conflict between going online and not daring to face reality, and are depressed, pessimistic and negative.
Behavioral aspects. Patients show frequent behavior of seeking online activities. In order to be able to access the Internet, they are willing to use up their tuition and living expenses, borrow money, cheat their parents, and even lose their personality and self-esteem, and in serious cases, steal and rob. The most direct harm of Internet addiction to students is that it delays their normal study, especially online games, causing them to be unable to concentrate on their lectures, to finish their homework on time, to have their grades decline, and even to skip classes and drop out of school. Various unhealthy contents in the Internet can also cause excessive self-indulgence, weak legal and moral concepts, distortion of life and values, and even lead to illegal and criminal behavior.
Test whether you are addicted to the Internet Here are 9 signs of Internet addiction, if you have 4 of them, you need to pay attention to them.
The Internet has taken over your body and mind; you keep increasing the time and intensity of the Internet; you feel irritable and have nothing to do when you suddenly cannot go online for some reason; you deliberately hide the extent of your addiction to the Internet from your family; you go online for 4-5 hours a day for more than a year; you use the Internet as the only way to relieve your pain; you regret after investing a lot of money and time, but you still cannot control the Internet the next day. Unable to control the urge to surf the Internet; sleep disorder, vision loss, loss of appetite and malnutrition due to long-term obsession with the Internet.