The article discusses the problem of digital addiction among adolescents and young adults within the context of socio-anthropology. Given the presence of this problem, we formed, as part of a project at the faculty and part of the psychotherapeutic approach to the treatment of the problem, an individual and a group program for the psychosocial treatment of digital addiction for adolescents and young adults. In the present article we clearly present both programs, which represent an innovative curative quality program. Both are designed coherently and focus on the manifested symptoms as well as on the treatment of the psychosocial background. They are designed on the basis of positive foreign practices, are adequately upgraded with consultative-therapeutic modality elements and are designed systematically and continuously, with the proper context and activity upgrade all the way up to the adolescent's regain of control over his life.
TopIntroduction
Incertitude, instability and vulnerability are the most common and painful characteristics of modern society as established by Bauman (2002, p. 202). “The phenomenon that all these concepts try to comprise and articulate is a composed experience of insecurity (condition, rights and survival), incertitude (regarding their duration and future stability) and danger (the human body, self and the subsequent outgrowth of the both such as: possessions, neighbourhood, community).” The transition into late modern society (Giddens) means the exclusion of an individual from traditional relations, religious systems and social relationships, on the other hand, the pluralisation of life styles and the competition of values aided to the disintegration of relationships that give meaning to a person’s life (Beck, Beck-Gernsheim, 2006). The risk mentioned by Beck manifests itself mostly on the level of an individual person and brings the risk within personal, intimate relationships that thus far seemed self-evident and untouchable.
Encouraging an individual to pursue only his own interests and satisfactions, and the interests and satisfactions of others only to the extent as they concern his own, causes shallowness and fragility in interpersonal relationships. There is no reciprocity or solidarity; there is only the prospect of an individual to acquire it, for it is an urgent psychological need, but the individual would not give it. The influence of individualization on interpersonal relationships results in the loss of continuity, durability, confidentiality, dedication and reliability in interpersonal relationships. The modern individual creates fragile and hollow interpersonal relationships, which are without the basic sense of security and belonging and thus, cannot give him the possibility to establish a strong identity.
The occurrence of unconnected and disjointed relationships in society, oversaturation and weakening of social ties, leads to the emerging of an un-centred subject, who no longer has solid identity foundations (Gergen, 1991). Being a subject of late modernity means to constantly be the subject of self-reflection, self-control and to have an identity, that is a difficult project to achieve. The modern individual no longer lives a solid, continuous and stable story. His »bricolage identity« (Lash) can be composed of completely unconnected, separate and temporary life stories. The possibility of an independent and the necessity of a constant choice-making, and moreover the creating of one’s own identity, which the individual cannot shape into a logical image, manifest themselves in a form of deviation in the individual’s life. The inability to create logical identity is manifested as embitterment, depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, hatred towards oneself or the world, violence against oneself or others, the final form of ripping one’s self-image is suicide (Kobal Grum, 2003).