30 days without social media. What happens when you really disconnect?
Seven hours a day. This is the time that many teenagers spend captivated by screens of all kinds: smartphones and their social networks, television series, chats, video games… An alarming fact that brings us face to face with an undeniable reality: at fifteen years old, it seems that there is no life without social networks. But what would happen if we tried to reverse course? In his bookLibremente Verónica, the writer and film director Fernando Muraca launches a provocative challenge to young people: 30 days without social networks. A utopia? Maybe not, and what happens when you disconnect? In this interview, Muraca tells us the stories of those who have accepted this experiment, revealing what happens when we decide to put the mobile phone in the drawer and see what it’s like to live without Facebook, without Instagram, without WhatsApp, or TikTok. An experience proposed to more than 30 thousand high school and college students throughout Italy.
Muraca, what is Libremente Verónica about?
The book tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who decides to disconnect from the virtual world of social media to connect and really see what is happening in her real life. This experiment confronts her with everyday challenges such as: cultivating friendships with friends, maintaining communication with them, carrying on with a crush. In this way, she is forced to rediscover forms of interaction from the past. In order to write this book, I had to resort to consultants, that is, to the valuable advice of young people who helped me understand the language and dynamics of social media, especially in the use they make of this virtual world. Then the need arose to find a teenager who would accept the real challenge of living 30 days without networks. By a happy coincidence, I met a girl named Veronica, just like the protagonist! She was the first to live this experience.
How would you describe your book?
“I would describe it as a romance that connects with the reality of teenagers. But its particular structure, divided into 30 chapters that represent the course of the 30 days that the experiment lasts, also makes it a valuable teaching tool for high school and secondary school teachers, who can integrate it into their classes as discussion material and also as a proposal.”
You have invited more than 30,000 teenagers to live this experience. How many accepted?
“Since I started presenting the book and launching the challenge in schools, I understood the magnitude of the problem, whose prospects were much greater than I imagined. Listening to and talking with teachers and students, I realized how serious and serious the addiction suffered by many teenagers was. At first, when I proposed the experiment in a school of 300 students, usually 4 or 5 managed to persevere to the end. Today, it even happens that no one succeeds, although many express their interest. Some, moved, have confessed to me their inability to persevere because of the intensity of their addiction to the mobile phone and the virtual world it encloses. Of the 30,000 teenagers with whom I interacted in Italian schools, only a hundred successfully completed the challenge.”
What were the results?
I call these young people, mostly girls, the sentinels of tomorrow because they have acquired an autonomy that will allow them to grow freely. During the experiment, the participants keep a diary to which I have had access, with the consent of the parents, to monitor what was happening. Living this experience allows us to fully understand the problem of addiction to social networks. Although it is not a definitive solution, it raises awareness about the reality of the problem and helps us implement appropriate strategies to deal with it.
Among the main results, the following stand out: A greater value of interpersonal relationships that are not measured to us by a screen. The decrease in psychological pressure on the body, which affects girls so much, is noticeable. Unlike adolescents of previous generations, who compared themselves to close environments, young women today are faced with thousands of apparently perfect female images. It is by relieving this psychological pressure that they find the freedom to express themselves as they are and not as they would like to be. Another very important aspect is the availability of free time to enjoy the present and real life. Many times they discover that they have talents that they had not noticed or cultivated because they are trapped in that bubble of social networks that traps them, standardizes them and weakens them.
Would one week be enough?
“No. One week is not enough. The first two weeks are terrible. We could define the first as a withdrawal crisis, while the second, even more difficult, is when the kids see the world they had created for themselves crumble. The benefits become evident from the third week, when the effect of continuous exposure to unattainable models and lifestyles fades. This is the first step to stop using social media excessively because it is addictive and distances you from real life. Therefore, the experiment makes sense if it is carried out for at least 30 days.”
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Why did you dedicate this story to hyperconnected teenagers?
“My children are now 17, 21 and 23 years old, so they have experienced the evolution of phone use without the Internet – with the Internet and its services, especially social networks. Becoming aware of what this implied, I wondered how to manage these changes from an educational point of view. As a film director, I was one of the first to work with these digital technologies to produce films, so I know the power of images. Therefore, in order to use them correctly in the family, it was necessary to find a method that was not imposed, but built by everyone. A pact between parents and children for their proper use. We immediately established precise rules and guidelines for use, such as: not using mobile phones at the table. An equal pact for young and old.”
Was there any particular event that prompted you to write?
“One day at the table, my second son told us with notable concern that a friend of his had a very serious problem: he was obsessed with online games and no longer left the house. Recognizing for the first time that our rules about the use of technology had been useful, he said to me: Dad, we are safe, could you do something for him? It was my youngest daughter who launched the idea of a novel for teenagers. That is how Libremente Verónica was born: around the table at home, with my children. It was they who wanted to remind their friends of the work of art that they could create with the mere existence that makes them unique, unrepeatable and extraordinarily diverse.”
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