At the beginning of the new school and sports year, the discussion around the education of young people resumes, focusing on how to address the now well-established increase in cases of discomfort, which has culminated in a repetitive and consolidated rise in depression and anxiety over the years, not to mention news stories that frighten and leave adults feeling powerless.
To demonstrate that this reality is not a phenomenon limited to Italy or any specific nation, surveys have been conducted across various continents on topics such as “I feel lonely at school,” “I feel left out at school,” or “I easily make friends at school.” It has emerged that since 2012, the perception of not having friends and feeling lonely has increased almost everywhere.
This has led to a decrease in the ability to stay focused on the present, to remain connected with one’s social environment and people, and, above all, to a distorted self-perception dominated by the distortions created through social media, which are experienced as reality. Many companies are aware of these problems, including Dove, which launched the #NoDigitalDistortion campaign aimed at boosting young girls’ self-esteem and promoting a positive body image on social media. Another example is the Body Confident Sport program, a body confidence campaign in collaboration with Nike, designed to enhance the body confidence of girls who play sports.
An alliance between families, schools, and sports organizations is needed to teach individuals to cultivate passion and interest in the activities they engage in.
This would not be intended to create a system of prohibitions but rather to stimulate the three main motivations that support growth: free play, adaptation, and social learning.
Childhood should be grounded in play, as is the case for all mammals. It is the period in which learning occurs through emotionally significant experiences. These activities are unsupervised by adults, where self-control is learned, and conflicts are resolved. They are activities that are enjoyed and freely chosen, not carried out to achieve pre-set goals. Physical play, outdoors, where some level of risk is involved, and with children of varying ages, is the most natural way of playing. Too often, when parents, teachers, or coaches intervene, play becomes less free, less enjoyable, and produces fewer benefits. Regarding sports during childhood, the issue is not the hours spent in training but how the rest of the time is spent, during which there is often no opportunity for free play.
The second motivational aspect reminds us that from the very beginning of life, children are engaged in a continuous emotional exchange with their social environment, which initially should be represented by the parents. Thus, growth occurs through the development of interpersonal relationships with an increasingly broader range of people, involving direct face-to-face contact, physical and motor interactions, and the typical ways of each culture. The world of social media moves in the opposite direction, distancing people from these relationships and offering others that are falsely realistic, but this social media world is rapidly growing.
The third aspect of human development is social learning. This does not concern academic learning but rather the activation of the desire to learn through imitation and having certain individuals as role models. Initially, children will imitate their parents, but they will then broaden their choices to include other people.
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