Find your way out the technological addiction labyrinth – TECHBYRINTH is a project aimed to raise awareness about the risk of technological and online addictions and to provide viable solutions and advice related to digital competences for youth and youth workers. Context According to the study carried by European Parliament daily use of internet increases 90 % amongst 15-24-year-olds. Internet use is heavy amongst adolescents, with a United Kingdom study showing that 12-15-year-olds spend an average of 21 hours per week online, next to 18 hours on a mobile phone. Europeans aged 16-24-year-old spend 168 minutes per day on mobile internet. Social media is used by 88 % of 15-24-year-olds, 4.4 % of European adolescents show pathological internet use that affects their lives and health, while 13.5 % of adolescents engage in maladaptive internet use behaviours. The percentage of 18-24 year olds who would qualify as being addicted to the internet is 71%. TECHNOLOGICAL ADDICTION, INTERNET ADDICTION, INTERNET USE DISORDER (IUD) or Internet addiction disorder (IAD) — is a fairly new phenomenon. It’s often described by psychologists as a serious problem involving the inability to control use of various kinds of technology, in particular the Internet, smartphones, tablets and social networks. Studies show that despite the technological addiction, youngsters lack real and useful digital skills. Having said the above, we identified real NEEDs: - Lack of awareness regarding the real danger faced when connecting all life aspects to the tech devices and internet. - Lack of structured instruments for youth worker to work on detection, prevention and recovery of technological addiction and inappropriate online behaviour - Lack of digital competences required for the integration in the labour market Idea: The main idea of the Project is to design a process and educational tools through which youth can identify the responsible and irresponsible usage of the new technologies and get advice on how to improve their digital behaviour, based on the European reference framework DigComp design to support a shared, comprehensive understanding of digital competences. Objectives • Providing youth workers educational tools which allow them to improve the usage of technology in their work and the quality of training programs related to topic • Support young people to identify the good and bad uses of technology and internet • Enabling youth workers access to knowledge regarding the responsible and useful usage of digital competence • Reducing the risks of the misuse of the new technologies • Increasing the responsible usage of the new technologies Activities and working methodology: The activities are planned to achieve the objectives of the project, to create qualitative and useful results and to produce a powerful impact. That is why, the DBR working methodology (Design-Based Research) is used to create the IOs, following the next steps: research, draft, contrast, test and validate with the target group, improved final design taking into consideration the feedbacks. The resume of the activities is: • App that allows the user to identify the bad/good uses of the technology and offer advice on how to improve such uses (tips, warnings, examples) o Creating the process of detecting risks through gamified real life scenarios o Designing the app correlating the risks with advices o Internal technical test o Creation of BETA version of the app o Final design of the app • Educational KIT which will provide youth worker with theoretical knowledge and know hows on the topic. o Draft the Educational KIT. o Implement and test the training plan with youth workers. o Pilot testing of the Educational KIT and the APP o Collecting feedbacks o Final design of the KIT The main tangible results of the project are 2 Intellectual Outputs which guarantee the project’s sustainability, by offering free access of these educational resources: • App – ESCAPE THE TECHBYRINTH that allows the user to identify the bad/good use of the technology and offer advice on how to improve such use (tips, warnings, examples) • Educational KIT - containing an informative manual about the risk detection and prevention of technological and online addiction and advice on improving digital competences according to Digcomp, a methodological guide on how to use the APP as an educational tool in courses or activities related to the topic, and a training plan, offering all the details on the implementation, content and activities for a training on the topic. Target group: -DIRECT: youth workers, trainers, coaches working on/ interested in the topic of technological/internet addiction and/or digital skills (40) - INDIRECT: youth at risk of technological/internet addiction, youth with inappropriate online behaviours, youth with low digital skills (110)
The main objective of Techbytrinth has been to provide youth workers with an innovative, free and useful tool to fight effectively against digital addictions, especially in the youth field, providing youth workers with an intuitive, dynamic and interactive application (IO1) that is excellently suited to the youth field in which it has been applied, generating a positive impact, identifying the different types of uses that currently exist with regard to young people and redirecting missusages in a novel way. At the same time, an EDUCATIONAL KIT (IO2) has been provided, which contain a large amount of information especially useful for youth workers, divided into an information manual, a methodological guide and a training for youth workers, providing them with all the necessary information for the implementation of the IO1. Thus, with both tools, the main objectives have been achieved, providing youth workers with a dynamic and innovative tool for the identification and reduction of digital addictions and missbehaviours in young people.
According to the study “Harmful internet use, Part II: Impact on culture and society” carried by the Panel for the Future Science and Technology of the European Parliament daily use of internet increases 90 % amongst 15-24-year-olds. Internet use is heavy amongst adolescents, with a United Kingdom study showing that 12-15-year-olds spend an average of 21 hours per week online, next to 18 hours on a mobile phone. Europeans aged 16-24-year-old spend 168 minutes per day on mobile internet. Social media is used by 88 % of 15-24-year-olds, 80 % using it daily, and daily use is 59 % for 25-39-year-olds. Some 4.4 % of European adolescents show pathological internet use that affects their lives and health, while 13.5 % of adolescents engage in maladaptive internet use behaviours. Similar numbers have been reported for adults. TECHNOLOGICAL ADDICTION — called INTERNET ADDICTION, INTERNET USE DISORDER (IUD) or Internet addiction disorder (IAD) — is a fairly new phenomenon. It’s often described by psychologists as a serious problem involving the inability to control use of various kinds of technology, in particular the Internet, smartphones, tablets and social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.