We live in the era of social media, of continuous communication and immediate expression of every psychological tremor. Ideas and emotions that run through the mind are shared in a sort of uninterrupted conversation, without any evaluation of the usefulness of sharing them with others and the likely reactions that what is expressed may determine in those who read or listen. This way of communicating denounces a lack of self-control: “I’m doing this because I want to”. It is a belated affirmation of the pleasure principle that has failed to evolve towards the reality principle. The pleasure, even sadistic as that of haters, to say not only what you think but to express what comes to your consciousness without any inhibitory brake. In my opinion, social networks provide everyone with their own audience to talk to, and require higher levels of self-control and, therefore, of psychological maturity than was required in the past. In psychology, the skills that allow this work are called executive functions that are the processes that allow to self-regulate the actions of human beings. They concern the ability to think before acting, to retain and manipulate information, to think about the consequences of actions and self-regulate behavior and in extreme summary they are:
- Response inhibition: waiting and thinking before acting (learned during kindergarten).
- Working memory: retaining and using information to solve problems (learned in elementary school).
- Mental flexibility: the ability to modify behavior according to situational and environmental changes (learned after 10 years).
These are processes, as you can read, whose development should end in early adolescence, while today we have many adults who demonstrate that they have never learned them. Obviously families, schools and sports organizations should be the realities involved in teaching these skills that are so important in today’s social life.
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