Youtube: Addiction vs addiction

(by Girolamo Panetta, AIDR member and CONSIS.Arl Area Manager) As the people of the net know well, YouTube is a web platform that allows the sharing and viewing of multimedia content on the internet: using this platform it is possible to view educational videos, music videos , video clips, trailers, short films and many other multimedia contents. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world, behind only Google and this gives us a substantial idea of ​​how much this platform is now present in the daily life of each of us.
The platform was founded in 2005 by three American guys as a tool for publishing home-made videos, to quickly become a container for third-party material such as TV shows and music videos and then as a tool for marketing and advertising. in a nutshell, a business platform; there are other sources that describe the history of YouTube very well, but here I want to emphasize once again how the network 'swallows' with great naturalness any information given to it, transforming its effects, scope and target. This phenomenon, which is transparent to the 'internet users', is, as said several times, the son of the digital revolution that has been underway for some time and with which we have almost a symbiotic relationship; in fact if we think well, on the net we carry out our daily actions without limitations and without the feeling of being able to make mistakes because at the moment we really believe that the net can help us in any case.
In our own small way we can modify the purpose of an application to our liking to instantly have a personal 'positive return'; let's think for example of the possibility of using a social application such as facebook to sell things that we no longer care about having available, furniture, musical instruments, trinkets, jewels and as much more as possible. It is trivial to say how immediate and immediately available this operation is and for many of us it is now part of a modus operandi that was unthinkable until some time ago. I remember the times when publication in local newspapers was used - here in Rome it was easy to resort to 'Porta Portese' - to place ads for research, sales, etc .; the message was published, the newspaper issue was expected to come out and the phone call was expected. To most these memories resonate with the romantic notes of a past now lost but only for the time that has passed and not what is now the custom, or to put it in other words - perhaps as the most successful psychologist or the most witty grandmother - to normal.
As AIDR - www.aidr.it - we are interested in promoting the interpenetration of the digital in all aspects of our public life far and wide; in the world of industry and public administration, in the world of energy and health, in the legal sphere and in that of social relations; in short, we have always emphasized how the digital revolution is changing the world and how it can change it in a positive sense even more and therefore we have tried to fully understand the distinctive elements of 'this digital revolution'; our thematic observers are always working to connote these elements in a world that can no longer demonize them, emphasize them and, more importantly, consider them normal.

The concept of normality from which I feel dissociated is that it is normal for something to be done, without any kind of connotation in the context; "Since I published the sales article on facebook, I want to see who answered me and check on my mobile if I have any notification"; this is normal but it is not - in my opinion - when I am having lunch with family members and I insistently look at my cell phone; or rather, I believe it is not normal in a context in which the moment of having lunch together takes on a role that is full of educational, psychological values ​​and sentimental flavors and colors, given by the family itself. Or, more generally, it is not normal when they significantly modify our way of interacting with the social sphere, favoring individualistic behaviors with no possibility of sharing other than telematic ones; and the examples can be many because even if they are tools of total sharing, social networks and YouTube, favor absolutely individualistic mental paths if not channeled in the right way of use.

Dependence and addiction
In relation to the contrast between social and individual and above all to the relationship between benefit and satisfaction in the use of social platforms, we cannot neglect YouTube precisely by virtue of the role it has assumed over time; we have already said that over the years this platform has been filled with contents of any kind; for educational / illustrative or playful purposes, for demonstration or advertising and promotional purposes, in short, if we want to be interested in something we can do it through YouTube. The strong link with the network, Google in particular, allows us to carry out targeted, fast and suitable searches for any purpose by typing more and more generic search parameters. In my humble opinion this thing is incredibly powerful; access to information required to satisfy this or that particular need is actually possible, without distinction of social class and education, we can therefore say in absolute democracy. Technology makes it possible to flatten social classes by guaranteeing the possibility of alignment on everything or everything that is of interest to us; it allows the 'mass' understood as an ever higher number to understand political, economic facts, etc. etc. in a way that television started many years ago. Access is then unlimited without time and with a definitely low expense: the digital revolution affects all of us and not just the elite and in fact we can see this as an implicit relationship of Addiction.
Beyond any relative discourse on the effectiveness of teaching that YouTube can express, also in relation to school and classroom teaching, I believe that such a portal can only be of help; just thinking that there can be a tool that can indicate examples of how men have had experiences in more specific fields and have solved particular issues is of great help and manages to channel their research paths, their needs and therefore their use of the network. In this case I would speak of the knowledge of one's own knowledge - deriving from the level of study and one's professionalism - to get to the use of the technological tool to deepen the topic. A bit like it was done with school books and the encyclopedia. I also give the example of a musician who wants to deepen a passage on a scale or on a particular piece of music; on YouTube, for example, he can learn how others have solved his own problem and maybe put it into practice immediately. But its basic preparation cannot be completely ignored. This is what I explain as addiction. In this way it goes without saying that YouTube, the network, cannot create addiction in the negative sense but only something that can offer more.

I firmly believe that in any case one must always start from a knowledge base that the web can create alternatively only in an absolutely unregulated way and full of pitfalls; if you do not have the ability to understand this, you risk creating within yourself a catalog of 'unmatched' definitions and models without a method of representation. My opinion is that it is always the goal that regulates the consequent activity, and behaviors deriving from this activity, and the way to share them in a social sense. Chaos - it is just one of the many reasons - creates Dependence because it is difficult to get out of chaos, because it does not give explanation and creates false expectations. In addition, it does not give the possibility of being explained following specific patterns precisely because it generates confusion in ideas and mental processes; but it can be shared. This explains the addiction instead.
Social networks like YouTube are also used to exchange nice and funny videos and this cannot be a negative aspect, quite the contrary. On the other hand, however, it must be said that when the element of comparison is always and only the video I believe that there may be some communication problem; look for example the integration between YouTube and WhatsUpp which in fact makes this concept immediate. How many times do you share the video without any comment, as if the video actually speaks for itself.
Is it YouTube that is addictive or is it the other way around? It is like answering whether the chicken or the egg was created first. In my opinion, but only to 'uncover' one of the many aspects to be explored - perhaps with the intervention of everyone -, is that the purpose of use is always and must always be the goal to aim for because those who have clear, the objective will always need to understand which are all the sources that can be accessed to reach the goal itself and will equip itself with that knowledge to deepen the information of these sources. I think the role of educational institutions and teachers is important in channeling the influence of social media in the paradigmatic aspects of study paths.

Youtube: Addiction vs addiction

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