Life with others gives us the possibility of managing ourselves and developing in society. We have heard ad nauseam that human beings are sociable. That is, we constantly need interaction and socializing with others to live.
Different authors define socializing, in general terms, as the process in which individuals incorporate norms, roles, values, attitudes, and beliefs. This is done through the social context in which they are inserted through various socializing agents such as family, peer groups, educational, religious, recreational institutions, and the media.
Since we are born, the primary affection is linked to another, that significant being, which is usually the mother, will be the one who provides the baby with care, nutrition, company, and verb. Thanks to this care, the baby begins to differentiate himself as an individual.
The experiences that the child has with his peers, from two years of age onwards until adolescence, will help him in the social aspects of his development and are also necessary elements for the process through which he discovers himself as an individual in his own right. Therefore, the child’s life with his peers is vital from an affective point of view and the point of view of developing the concept of himself.
We wonder then what happens to the individual who is lacking this process. One of the post-pandemic effects that we will have to evaluate in due course will be the behavior of young children who have been deprived of this daily, natural and inherent human socializing process. Children and adolescents have abruptly stopped the process of learning to live with others in school spaces. From talking with friends, lending school supplies, standing in line, singing the anthem, joking, intervening in class, sharing snacks, actions are only experienced in the school space and are currently deprived of them. These behaviors cannot be replaced or compensated by virtual education.
Internet Helps People Live Together
It is difficult for someone who has not had the opportunity to live together, play, fight, compete, agree, and collaborate with others to continue developing those skills virtually. It is difficult for someone who has not had the opportunity to live together, play, fight, compete, agree, and collaborate with others to continue developing those skills virtually. However, specific online platforms like the best virtual reality casinos to play for real money can help many people compete and socialize, which can help them in real life. Playing in online casinos will be forced to compete fairly, exercise patience, and think about the best strategies against others. Indirectly they will practice socializing.
The child’s daily experience in his school environment will allow his development and maturity in the formation of his independence. The socialization typical of a preschool-age child through the social exchange between school-age children to discover ways of living together
- at school,
- in sports settings,
- in cultural and
- recreational spaces.
These evolutionary moments of life allow the individual to defend his interests and rights with his criteria for his future.
The routine of daily life that we know in face-to-face interactions with others constitutes the bulk of social activities. However, the current confinement scenario with closed schools forces us to rethink children and adolescents in multiple interdependent contexts adapted to the mental and behavioral dispositions imposed by social distancing in terms of interaction and coexistence.
New Technologies Have Been Changing Many Things
New technologies have been changing the social skills of children and adolescents (at least of those who have access to them). Today, the so-called “digital natives” today face new codes in relationships and dangers that already existed but have become more acute with the frequency of permanent use of the virtual medium.
The Internet as a means of socializing has offered the population different ways of meeting people, making new friends, and even starting romantic relationships. Chat, social networks, and even online VR casinos and live dealer casinos are presented as excellent means of communication. Despite having a “bad impression,” online casinos have proven to be a “warm” medium of socialization. In equality, you can play and interact with other gamblers in the best online casinos.
At first, the Internet was considered a means of communication for people with high status, and it was seen that way. However, the large number of users who join the network every day show that despite the economic factor, managing to be the medium mass media with global coverage.
Aristotle said that Man is, by nature, a social animal, but this does not mean that our behavior, within a society, is natural, but rather that it is learned behavior. Men must learn to act like men, and we call this learning process socialization.
Traditionally, it has been considered that there are four agents of socialization: The Family, which has a fundamental role since it is the first social level to which we have access. In today’s society, the school has acquired a greater weight in socialization. The school is a transmitter of knowledge and reinforces values. The equals of the equals to us learn values attitudes in a mutual learning process. The media that inform us of events, create opinions, transmit values among them is the Internet.
In addition, the media transmit values contrary to those intended to be transmitted through the other agents of socialization. However, not everything is negative regarding the media and the transmission of values or information. The Internet has meant a real revolution that some institutions have been able to use to benefit society in general.
Internet Is the Best Social Medium
The Internet is a medium that can change our lives or how we perceive them. A very clear example can be found in distance education’s evolution. Online education overcomes previously impossible difficulties, such as distance or the synchrony between teacher, student, or other classmates.
Internet cafes and cyber help people to have the opportunity to enter into this new way of communicating and developing their creativity. Therefore, they are generating a new social and work culture. After all, ICT or Information and Communication Technologies are not only a network to which individuals join, but act as social technologies whose improvement depends both on the diversity of their functions, be they social, political, cognitive, economic, etc. Therefore, as well as of the flexibility, they adapt to our functional diversity: “to our life cycles, from childhood to old age, our changing and oscillating motor skills or our thresholds of audiovisual perception.
Featured Image by Harish Sharma from Pixabay
