Abdullah Solmaz, an expert psychologist at Hasan Kalyoncu University Psychological Counseling and Guidance Center, said that technology addiction is confined especially children and adolescents to the virtual world and distracted from the real world.

Internet, computers and their derivatives have entered our daily lives more often. Especially children and young people see technology as a means of entertainment, but most of the time they spend with technological games. Expert Psychologist Abdullah Solmaz, who says that this situation is as harmful as it is beneficial, has warned the parents.

Stating that parents should take care of their children who are their future, Solmaz said that computer games have caused great damage to children and young people in particular.

“If we do not care for our children, many forces tend to take care of our children,” Solmaz, warned and added, “In the past, wars would have been with guns and rifles, and now ‘addictions’ has taken its place.”

Expressing that technology dependency is seen as the biggest addiction problems in recent times, Solmaz mentioned that technology dependency is considered as an occult disease of our time,

“When we investigate the technology dependency, the individual builds an unhealthy relationship with technological tools. This relationship develops as follows: If the individual is experiencing tension, unhappiness, and irritability when he/she does not deal with technological tools, if he increases the usage hours more and more every day and if he does not fulfill his social responsibilities due to these uses, he ends up problems with his family and its social life. The effect of this on the human is four dimensions. First one has a problem in physical meaning. There are physical disorders in bone, muscle and skeletal system, damage to eyes, physical stamina are affected negatively. It can trigger other addictions in the psychological sense.”

Solmaz pointed out that particularly, children's violence-related games bring significant damages, “One of the psychological disorders is the blunting of the empathy in the individual. In the social sense that harming the communication with the closed environment of the child is weakening relations with the parents. Also seriously damages the thought processes.”

“There are three dimensions that push children to game addiction. The physical one, there are some hormones in the human brain that make this hormone active in the individual. The reward and punishment system is developing because it forms emotions. The individual is also pleased with it. The person is deliberately addicted to the game and not aware of it because of the pleasure. This addiction is deliberately developing. The person tends to fulfill the gap psychologically and mentally. Unfortunately, game addiction lay the ground for this gap if it does not fulfill with appropriate models.”

Solmaz warns parents to give unconditional messages to their children and to avoid the causes of the child's blank, “People know that they are aware of the social aspects of game addiction anyway, especially as children and youngsters inform each other about new games. We need to give unconditional messages to our children as parents. We have to deal with the reason that will cause the child's blank.”

“We have to use the technology, it shouldn’t use us”

Solmaz said, "We can talk about the three steps of technology dependency, the first is the use of technology. This is what we normally use to get things done in daily life. Now technology is an indispensable part. We do our business by using technology. This is normal usage. Sure the important here is that we have to use the technology. The technology shouldn’t use us. The second step is the abuse of the technology. Using technology intensely as physically, socially and mentally that the individual is being hurt. Which can be avoided. Especially in children and young people. If we can help them feed the individual lessons, social relations and physical development, we can help them in abuse of the technology.”

Solmaz said that people who feel themselves in a virtual environment through a telephone and computer in a digital age have new disease called fomo disease which is fear of missing news and developments in various social media environments.

ILKHA