How internet and games affect the teenage mind

1 Watch the video  and put the words into the gaps in the text

Clinicians working with (1)____ have started to realise how important it was to start to understand the (2)___of electronic media, the internet, BBM, all sorts of things on the young people. It is very difficult for us, old persons, to understand how much there has been a (3)___ change in relationship even between young people because of these new tools. In the past, adolescence was really a time of emotional (4)____, discretion and sometimes physical (5)_____.  Now young people tend to share their emotions, their thoughts, their love and to (6)____ it to the world through Facebook, through the internet, from very personal (7)____, texts but also pictures of them that, in the past, I, we would have (8)____, or maybe shared only with a few friends. This also has led to a possibility to get in touch with anybody at any time. In the older days, maybe school time was when you interacted, but then you went back home. Now at 11 pm, your phone starts to (9)____ because somebody has said something about you and then suddenly your whole group of friends is starting to comment. Not only this, but adolescence was a time where your sense of identity and also of sexual identity was developing. Nowadays anybody has access to material which 20 years ago, 25 years ago was limited to paying adults. Therefore they are going to have to come to terms with (10)____, which at a certain age, can be (11)____, but also lead sometimes to absolutely surprising expectations with regard to what is okay or not, and how one should (12)____ with one’s boyfriend or one’s girlfriend. More deeply than this, there is an issue with the development of what I would call identity, subjectivity. The (13)____ Jacques Lacan talks about the ‘mirror stage’, as a key phase in the development of personality. This mirror stage is when the child, a (14)____, for the first time recognises himself or herself in the mirror: “This is me.” It is a very important moment because before that you had a sense of yourself but then you start to (15)_____ an image. I mean you’re also this, and you (16)____ that what you see in the mirror is what others see of you. So you have to (17)____ reality but also a very strange aspect of reality, which is your image. This image you can manipulate, you can dress up, you can put some makeup on yourself, but at the same time there is something that you can’t change, which is the reality of your body - how tall you are, how blonde, or dark haired, how fast, how muscular, how pretty. You negotiate something with that sense of reality, one of the problems that we see now is that when you are dealing with friends through the internet, very often you can manipulate this image, you can change it. And the extreme example is represented by some games in which you are actually, on screen, an avatar. You are an electronic creature, and the quality of this (18)____ you determine, you invent. Now if you can be powerful and fast and beautiful and clever and always winning for hours and hours and also in your interaction with friends, how is this going to impact on the sense of self, when you are back to reality, where you’re playing, when you’re having fun with real others? What do you expect of them, but also what do you expect of yourself? And it is very possible that the very nature of the electronic media is having an (19)____ on the developments of structures that, we psychoanalysts would call, the ego ideal or narcissism, which actually means in simple terms the image of yourself, what you expect of yourself, your value but also your hopes, your plans, your (20)___  life. How could you deal with the change that this involves, if there’s a massive disappointment then in reality when, having being world champion footballer on FIFA, a game, then suddenly you can’t kick a ball. Or you realise, you may discover over the years that, to kick a ball, you need to learn, when actually onscreen it’s a completely different process of learning, it’s a learning that is actually (21)_____from one game to the other largely? So suddenly you discover that to be as good as you thought, you’re going to have maybe to make an effort, to work, to discover and to accept that you don’t know, which is the first step towards (22)_____. Could it be that it is that sort of electronic impact that explains why nowadays young people want to be (23)___? Do they have a skill - can they sing, can they act, can they play? Maybe not. Does it matter? No, because actually what you want is the status, not necessarily the apprenticeship, the long process and actually (24)____ the skills and the qualities (25)___. So there is a divorce between reality and the imaginary world. This divorce always existed but, in the past, the reality principle brought you back to a more (26)___or realistic position. Nowadays there is an (27)___ amount of (28)___ because what you have experienced as real life, but is in fact a virtual life, does not fit your experience of your real life. How much is this connected with, not just disappointment, but (29)____, is something that we’re going to discover probably over the next 10 to 20 years, but it’s very important that clinicians, professionals, start to think about this modification already now.	radical
	impact
	exuberance
	secrecy
	adolescents
	comments
	bleep
	expose
	hidden
	behave
	images
	traumatic
	impact
	toddler
	assume
	creature
	expectations
	take into account
	psychoanalyst
	become aware
	celebs
	required
	transferable
	knowledge
	humble
	mastering
	psychopathology
	frustration
enormous

2 Vocabulary focus. Sudy the words and  word combinations, practise their translation, spelling. Check your knowledge in the test. Play vocabulary game and set your own vocabulary game record.

3 Mark the following statements as True or False

1.     Today young people like secrecy and don’t share their feelings with friends.

2.     In the old days young people communicated at school, but with internet they can start talking even late at night.

3.     Some images on the internet can be traumatic for young people.

4.     Young people never model their behavior with boyfriends or girlfriends on what they see online.

5.     Self-image of a person can be changed.

6.     Internet gives new ways to manipulate and change self image.

7.     Electronic media is having an impact on the development of psychic.

8.     Ego ideal is very stable and cannot be changed by internet.

9.     Expectations and skills gained online can be easily transferred to real life.

10. Young people value knowledge and are ready to work really hard to become famous.

11. To become internet celebrity one has to be talented.

12. Virtual life is a preparation for real life.

4 Answer the Questions

1.     How do young people use internet and electronic media today? What kind of information can they share with their friends?

2.     How has communication pattern changed in recent years? When, where and with whom do young people prefer to communicate today?

3.     What is the connection between expectations, real life relationships and internet?

4.     What is ‘mirror image’? How is it affected by internet?

5.     What techniques can young people use to modify their image?

6.     What is the relation between ‘virtual’ skills and real-life skills? Can internet help gain knowledge or understand its importance?

7.     Why do young people want to become stars and celebrities? How can internet and electronic media help them?