Have your say – Youth strategy
EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 – interim evaluation
About this initiative: The aim of this initiative is to evaluate the strategy’s overall effectiveness and performance, efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU added value.
Feedback period: for stage 3 it is 26 April 2023 – 02 August 2023
About EC consultations: You can also get involved in forming EU laws. The European Commission would like to hear your views on laws and policies currently in development. They offer a platform “Have your say” with the list of all new EU initiatives open for public consultation. You need to register to write your feedback. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say
Feedback for stage 3 from Europeans for Safe Connections
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Feedback for stage 2 from Europeans for Safe Connections
We “Europeans for Safe Connections” think that EU Youth Strategy fails to fulfil its aims.
One of EU Youth Strategy aims is “to support social and civic engagement”. Young people should develop respect and tolerance for minorities, people with handicap, people with other opinions and needs – this includes people that do not like cigarette smog as well as people that do not like electro smog. Young people should learn that using wireless is the same as smoking – the exposition reaches also your surrounding.
One of EU youth policies is “Health and well-being of young people“. But young people are not educated how to use modern technologies safely. It’s like a baby playing with the knife. We have to teach them how to use it safely so that they do not harm themselves nor others. The same applies to wireless products.
Young people have the right to explore the world and enrich their lives with information. Adults and responsible authorities have a duty to ensure healthy psychosocial and physiologic development.
Children have a “gift” that they learn easily how to use tablets, mobile phones and computers, so it is not necessary to increase efforts in digital education. On the opposite, we think that children are increasingly exposed to uncontrollable digitisation in schools and at home, and that non-digital skills are being reduced. By overusing digital tools, children’s graphomotor skills, memory, creativity, decision-making and problem-solving can be compromised. Researcher Rüdiger Maas found that children are becoming more and more dependent and unhappy and blaims digital media as a reason. www.focus.de/familie/kindergesundheit/ruediger-maas-im-focus-online-interview-wir-erziehen-eine-generation-von-ungluecklichen-kindern-mahnt-forscher_id_24431828.html
A number of medical researchers confirm that digital technologies can be compared to digital drugs. It is irrelevant whether we are talking about addiction to computer games, social media, watching television, Internet multimedia content or just browsing the Internet. It’s all a connected vessel. Children learn addiction quite early and get dopamine and adrenaline through screens. There is a reduced need for face-to-face socialising, going out, playing sports. Psychological problems arise from the lack of screen time, which can develop into serious conditions. There is also harmful effect of blue light on the brain. Add to these facts the fact that most authorities (whether institutions or parents) are completely unaware that wireless technology damages child’s health, either acutely or in the long term.
Let’s teach kids and teens that all technology can be useful, but it also has downsides. Encourage creativity and healthy curiosity, but at the same time ensure that technology does not become a digital drug or a means of harmful exposure, which will ultimately harm a child’s health and development.
It is essential to educate all stakeholders, including educational authorities and organisations involved in the digitalisation in education, about the pitfalls of wireless technologies. By adult’s example they would also be indirectly educated. It is necessary to promote discussion on the inclusion of a preventive approach in the national curricula of the Ministries of Education and Health and on the onset of use at a later stage in development.
Best regards
Petra Bertová and Kamil Bartošák
on behalf of the Europeans for Safe Connections
This feedback was sent from a wired internet connection
– No use of harmful radiation
– Less electricity consumption
– Increased data security