Sicurezza dei bambini e cellulari
Children’s safety and mobile phones
Jan 27th, 2009 by Ivo Quartiroli | 
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In a world which seems to be decreasingly safe for children, parents often feel more relaxed when their children have a mobile phone at their disposal, or even better, a GPS which can trace their position at any time. The idea is to have a permanent and direct connection with the children, bypassing any other net of connections with the territory and with the people who live and work there, mostly unknown and, therefore, seen as potentially dangerous.
Nevertheless, the availability of mobile phones and control systems do not bring more safety for children. The massive use of such technologies is, instead, itself part of the problem. Through their use there is a tendency of further ignoring the people and the situations of the neighborhood and the safety net which they give. The disconnection from the surrounding environment has, of course, roots older than use of mobile phones. A great deal of the territory has been taken over since long for use by cars and by other vehicles for the production, distribution and sale of goods.
When not connected with the territory and with the surrounding people, a child will not turn to the people near him, either in case of necessity or for generic communication. When I was a child, I remember that it was possible to refer to adults for any reason, and they mostly felt responsible regarding the small creatures of the community. Someone would also scold us, but it was part of life.
Nowadays an adult is afraid of contact with a child as much as a child fears contact with an adult. There is a culture of collective suspicion, therefore, an adult who communicates with a child risks being considered a pedophile or a child kidnapper. This way the basic need for contact, mutual interrelationships and human teaching between generations is mostly lost. Besides, a child is penalized by the scarceness of human contacts.
The condition of many only children, very often with separated parents, without extended families, to which are added prohibitions of playing in condominium courtyards (where adults pass by and can establish contact with children and then be recognized in the streets as well) impoverish the quality and frequency of human relationships which are essential for development of the personality.
In the industrially underdeveloped countries, apart from the tragic situations which take place in big cities where the connection with the territorial identity is lost or situations of extreme poverty, the children are more mature, respectful, responsible and much better equipped to handle interpersonal relationships. Living in a territory with real people instead of living with video games or communicating by chat gives the capacity of relating in ways which cannot be substituted by any technology.
The human qualities of joy, inner strength, perseverance, patience, humor, love, etc. are passed on by example and direct contact. These essential qualities do not only render our lives more effective on a practical level and richer for our inner lives, but are also the “media” which will support us in the spiritual process of developing inner consciousness.
The best safety for children is given by the net of people known in the territory who interact with each other. When I was a child we used to play in the street and the adults were mostly known people. It could be an aunt or the father of one of us, who assumed the double role of the protector and controller of discipline. When we made some mischief we would often get a healthy cuff from these figures. Today they would risk being sued by the parents. The world was not safe at that time either, unpleasant facts always existed, but everyday life was not permeated by a general mistrust of neighbors.
Technology, in its attempts to resolve the problem, make it chronic, accepting it as ordinary and not acting on its root. A solution suggested for the insecurity of the territory is to alienate ones self from it further through mobiles, and by doing so we increase the insecurity, considering the territory as something alien to us, like a hostile environment which should be controlled through technologies. This causes mutual feedback between ever-more sophisticated technologies of communication and control from a distance on one hand, and separation from contact with the environment and the people who live in it, on the other.
