Psychologist and psychotherapist Yolanda Creţescu draws attention to eating disorders that occur more and more often among children exposed to the Internet from an early age.
Children have access to the Internet from very young Age Photo: Shutterstock
The age at which a child should have access to gadgets must be after 12-13 years, when the individual’s brain and ability to self-regulate, Yolanda Creţescu said on Thursday evening, on Medika TV, according to news.ro.
The psychologist claims that because of the false models, in which children are exposed on the Internet, eating disorders occur at younger ages.
“The need for models is normal, it is natural, we form our personality according to the models we have been exposed to, the theory tells us that in the primary models, that is, the mother, father and main caregivers. But if the main carers are the characters in Instagram, that they are not people, they are characters, we have not seen them, we have not put their hands on them, then those will become models”, Said Yolanda Creţescu.
These problems arise against the background of children’s wishes to get to resemble as much as possible on what I see on the Internet.
“What do we do with this idealized world, in which the world is only happy, in which the pictures are perfect, in which the texts that accompany the pictures are the most inspirational? What do we do with the powerlessness, with the negative situations that every man has? Those are not on social media and then the child who understands? That, if it is not perfect, it has nothing to do with this world. Eating disorders have begun to appear in increasingly young children due to false models. 10-year-old girls with anorexia, 11-12 year olds with eating bulimic behavior, with self-prophesaling because the mimicking of adult life is very difficult to lead, their emotional, relational brain, the ability to decide have not formed. All this must form in a real world”, She explained.
Yolanda Creţescu said that the little ones should be listened to without being judged, and the children must be brought to the real world.
“We condemn this virtual world, but this world has found its place, because it was an empty place. We were the ones who disappeared from the world and from the proximity of the children, for economic reasons, for social reasons, from the need to compensate, perhaps, the previous generation – I have to be better and better than my father – and I forgot to raise a child. Not for nothing is said to raise a child you need a tribe, not an internet network. Where’s the tribe? Because substances, internet and cyberbullying are worlds that have been facilitated by us, we like or do not like it, we have to assume this”, The psychologist said.
