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Boom in cyberbullying, uncertainty about sexual orientation, more loneliness and consumption of pornographic material. On the other hand, the consumption of alcohol and drugs is decreasing. These would be the new habits of adolescents at the time of Covid according to a research conducted on 5000 students in Veneto, Campania and Puglia.
New habits of adolescents in the Covid era: less sociability, more social
With less freedom and opportunities to socialize live, the web has become increasingly present in everyone’s life, teenagers in the first place, who try to fill the void that the pandemic has forced them to. This search for normality through the medium of the internet can be seen in every area, from school with the dad to the personal and emotional one with social networks and dating sites.
The results emerged from a study by the Fondazione Foresta Onlus of Padua, directed by Professor Carlo Foresta, on more than 5,000 young people who attend the upper wings of Veneto, Campania and Puglia, as part of the DiGitPro project.
Research has shown how obvious one is increased feeling of loneliness, in particular males: one in four said they suffered from loneliness (in 2018-2019 it was only one in eight) and 19% said they were dissatisfied with their life, compared to only 10% in the years before the pandemic.
However, there is a need for live healthier: there has been a decrease in the consumption of alcohol and drugs and an increase in beneficial foods belonging to the Mediterranean diet.
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New habits of adolescents in the Covid era: sexuality
The younger ones have rediscovered themselves and others in a different way. Through the webcam they both talked to their friends and made new encounters. With this new approach to sociability, the sexual sphere has played a key role. According to the research results, there would be one greater uncertainty about one’s sexual orientation: in fact, the percentage of boys who declare not to be heterosexual increases (8% in ’18 -’19 compared to 15% in ’20 -’21), and, above all girls, who in previous years were already oriented towards a minor heterosexuality, in the last year they confirmed and increased this trend (22% in 18-19 compared to 29% in 20-21).
Due to the impossibility of seeing each other and of discovering their sexuality in a more natural way, adolescents have turned to them more frequently to dating sites (10% in 2020-2021 compared to 5% two years earlier), ea pornographic websites. This latter habit is increasingly belonging to girls: more than 30% said they habitually link to pornographic sites, compared to only 15% in 2018-2019, and an increase in auto-eroticism emerged in parallel. They also increased accordingly sexting and cybersex, doubled in the last year (to 34% and 6% respectively this year).
New habits of adolescents in the Covid era: the risks
The risks associated with continuous lockdowns are evident from a psychological point of view. Loneliness has already been mentioned, but cases of cyberbullying which affected 40% of girls and 25% of boys. Professor Carlo Foresta, originally from Lecce, comments as follows:
The pandemic has erased an important part of the social life of children. It becomes more difficult to get to know peers, fall in love and experience sexuality, which has therefore poured into the only social tool at their disposal: the internet.
It also talks about the risks that can arise from sharing one’s privacy on the web
Here, however, i risks deriving from sharing your privacy on the web increase, as demonstrated by the very high percentage of cyberbullying acts. However, these telematic tools represent only one semblance of sociability, which cannot compensate for the real dynamics of social relations that develop in the school environment in the presence. The resulting greater loneliness has perhaps opened up large spaces for self-reflection in young people, bringing to the surface a greater uncertainty in their sexual orientation. On the other hand, if it is true that risk behaviors such as smoking and alcohol have decreased, the impact of the lockdown on physical activity and therefore on health, especially in the long term, should not be ignored.
Read also: Does birthday in lockdown have psychological effects?
