“Parking” toddlers for hours in front of the television to remain quiet could be considered a form of neglect, says Dr Jorg Fegert, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University Hospital Ulm, in Germany, and president of the European Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from 2023. Speaking to Kathimerini, he says “children need eye contact and direct interaction with their parents.”
Dealing with an increasingly digitized world is one of the greatest challenges for young people and their parents, Dr Fegert says, adding that child psychiatrists are confronted with new forms of trauma. “Girls in early puberty are particularly sensitive to body comparisons on social media, and this can have a strongly negative impact on their self-esteem and may lead to significant psychological distress.”
Experts also come into contact with the consequences of sexual abuse and cyberbullying online. “We also observe that due to algorithms, boys are much more frequently affected as victims than in the analog world. In the analog world, sexual abuse typically affects girls in about 80-90% of cases. In digital contexts, the numbers of those affected are almost equal between boys and girls. This means that, for example, perpetrators with pedophilic interest in boys can approach boys much more easily through targeted grooming on the Internet,” he explains.
