E-addiction … epidemic threatening young people

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KUWAIT CITY, Oct 17: The conference “Arab and Gulf Family Issues in Light of Digital Transformation” was inaugurated yesterday by the Center for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior. The participants emphasized the advantages of modern technology and the enormous potential and capabilities it has made available to humans but warned of the negative repercussions of modern technology on the Arab and Muslim family and its values, traditions and role. The speakers at the conference highlighted the seriousness of the phenomenon of electronic addiction, which has become an epidemic threatening young people.

They stressed on the role of social media in spreading rumors, lies, and falsifying facts in some cases, in addition to spreading the culture of violence and hatred, due to which they called on parents to set limits and controls on children’s use of mobile phones. Director of the Center for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Dr. Yaqoub Al-Kandari said, “The conference comes in the context of the center’s constant and ongoing keenness to pay attention to issues related to the family, women and society, based on its belief in the role of the family. Modern technology has played a major role in social issues in the Gulf, the Arab world and the world as well as in the family, and has led to extraordinary transformations in human beings.” Dr. Al-Kandari explained that the era of technology began in the mid-nineties and was accompanied by warnings to protect families.

At the beginning of the current millennium, social media increased in power and brought about tremendous changes. It continues to have many effects in an era in which the mobile phone has transcended the boundaries of time and space. Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the International Organization for the Empowerment of Women and Capacity Building Dr. Taghreed Al-Hajli highlighted the importance of the conference in protecting the Arab and Gulf families from the dangers of digital transformation when it is used negatively. Furthermore, a faculty member at the Saad Al-Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences Dean Dr. Mutlaq Al-Mutairi said technological development and social media have made a phone extend beyond its role as a means of communication. He explained that the mobile phone has become a television, a camera, a recorder, and a newspaper.

Digital transformation has benefits, including that it brought the family closer together with their children studying abroad, made the world more open, became a platform for opinion, and helping scientific researchers. On the other hand, the most prominent disadvantage is children’s addiction to the Internet and social media, so the family must not leave the phone in the hands of their children 24 hours a day.

Other negative aspects include the large number of traffic accidents resulting from the use of a mobile phone while driving, its contribution to some people becoming atheists, and its contribution to the spread of rumors and lies. This has become more dangerous with the emergence of artificial intelligence and its ability to falsify facts. In the same context, Professor of Criminal Sociology and Crime at the Saad Al- Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences Dean Dr. Bader Al-Khubaizi stated that modern technology has positive effects on various social, political, educational and psychological levels. However, one of its most prominent negatives is the availability of unethical websites on the Internet, which negatively affects teenagers and young people, as well as exposure to fraud, bullying, threats, blackmail, and the dissemination of strange ideas that violate religious values, in addition to its negative role in disturbing people through hacking.

Addiction to sitting in front of smartphones causes mental illness and social violence, and leads to an increase in crime rates. In addition, a professor at the International University of Science and Technology Dr. Sami Al-Azmi said, “Electronic addiction has become a pathological epidemic that threatens young people, the mainstay of societies, causing serious harm to the efforts to achieve development. These harms are increasing in light of the weakness of religious motivation among children.”

By Najeh Bilal Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff

This news has been read 1321 times!