NEL CAPITALISMO DELLA SORVEGLIANZA con Donato Salvia

[00:00:01]Good evening to all the videos and video actresses of Cenci Davide, my YouTube channel. I invite you right away to also subscribe to the Telegram channel of the same name formerly The Program and now Cenci Davide also as a Telegram channel because there you will find a lot of info, many updates. Every time a new video comes out you can find it there, unlike YouTube lately which tends not to give me much visibility, not even to my subscribers, not even to my subscribers through notifications. So there's a period that's a bit like that, let's say. And if you want to get around this shadow censorship, Telegram is an excellent tool to stay updated on my posts, to follow, to have a laugh often with the posts.

[00:00:51]But let's get to tonight's guest. I'm very happy to have been able to bring tonight's guest to this channel. he is an author, a popularizer, a creator of a project at a national level much better known, let's say, known to the general public as well as outside the screens.

[00:01:08]It has become a point of reference for parents who find themselves facing what is commonly called the digital age. in a much more complicated way than what instead seems to be very simplified by the mainstream that often wants to sell it to us as progress and as often happens, as I have often said on my channel, unfortunately, in some respects it is a false progress, but there are also very important topics that this author addresses both in books and in conferences. He is very present online and also offline, rightly so as to also be consistent with his project, in conferences with schools, he collaborates with educational institutions and fights what he himself defines as a real addiction to smartphones, tablets and video games. His approach is a bit unique because it starts with educating parents, it starts with helping parents too, because many times he doesn't propose, let's say, punishment, he doesn't propose deprivation, he does n't propose just viewing these technologies with extreme negativity, but he proposes real solutions with books, with methods, with a set of techniques that he has studied, that he has explored in a very competent way and that actually tries to help parents and children who find themselves dealing with hyper- exposure to screens, therefore very, very high screen time. Let me introduce him to you. Donato Salvia. Hi [snorting] Donato.

[00:03:04]Hi Davide, good evening everyone.

[00:03:07]How are you? Everything OK?

[00:03:09]Yes, yes, very very hot here in Milan, but I'm fine. Well, first of all, thank you for being here, for coming as a guest on my channel. And let's move straight to the concrete topics, let's say, starting with a sort of biography of yours, a bibliography, that is, in the sense of what you've written as a writer, what are your books and, let's also take a step back, who is Donato Salvia and how did you come to write your passion, how did your passion arise?

[00:03:48]So, I 'm a 64-year-old kid who a few years ago, in a rather dull period of my life, let's say, not very exciting, I thought about writing a book, so I liked the idea of ​​writing a book and I tried. But here the question is, what am I writing about? So I thought I'd write about the fact that I was born without a hand, that is, I'm Amelico, as it's technically called, I'm missing fingers because of a drug, a teratogenic drug, a drug that in the 60s created a pharmaceutical scandal and which then gave birth to pharmacovigilance. I wrote this book for my friends because even though I have many friends, people may be a little reluctant to ask me, "Why are you like this?" I mean, they don't ask you why you have no hand, right? There were people who thought I had cut it off at work, various various things. And in the end, when I wrote this book, I wrote it precisely for the four friends I have, that is, for my closest friends.

[00:05:01]Instead what happened was that my wife liked it. So I made an editorial program, I proposed it and it was published and since then it has been my right hand, let's say. my right hand. Yes, this awareness of saying "Oh well" has started. Eh, after I tried to say but I'm a good writer, I only wrote my story was it easy? So I tried a slightly more difficult test: I wrote a novel, a spy story. I had been in Libya 10 days before the war broke out.

[00:05:35]It was a normal place, I went out for dinner.

[00:05:39]Well, I was, I mean, there was absolutely no indication that a war was breaking out, a revolution as they sold it. So when after a week I saw in the newspapers that this thing had broken out, yes, there you have it, I wrote this book sitting in the desert for a with Gaddafi which is a fanciful spy story, but where I describe, well, my disagreement with the fact that this war had been rigged. In the book it's obviously manipulated for a very sci-fi thing, but there are also messages.

[00:06:10]And you too found a publisher who wanted it, who wanted to publish it. Now, after many years, the rights have expired and I plan to republish it. But then I started from there. And what then happened is that during the pandemic I taught my niece, my niece was 6 years old, she was in first grade and here we begin to enter the history of the campaign, right? And during the pandemic I was a teacher, my wife and I are the first grade teacher for my niece who was home from school.

[00:06:53]Knowing that if he missed first grade it would be a big problem. Once the pandemic was over, my niece came home, er, she went back to school, and the friend who had followed me on this journey I had taken with my niece, giving me advice on that, because I really had no idea what I was supposed to explain to her, er, asking me how it went, said to me, "Well, your niece was very lucky." That is, she is lucky. So, to help parents and other children, I thought I'd write this story, which isn't a—I mean, I wrote a book that isn't an educational book, but a book, so to speak, to help parents, a story, which is what this is. An easy school for parents and ah, see? Great, you've already found it. the easy school for busy parents which has no pedagogical pretensions, but there is advice, there are experiences, there are even very funny stories. And in one of the pieces of advice I give, for example, it was, don't make your child eat too much sugar because the child won't stay still, right?

[00:08:00]That is, my niece ate a lot of food, she did n't sit still, so it was a bit difficult to teach her, er, the lesson. Another piece of advice I gave is that I noticed because my experience was very empirical, that is, in the sense that my story was very empirical, that is, I wrote down what I experienced. My niece watched a lot of cartoons and was absent. So don't show too much television. So the pandemic is over, the kids are going back to school, I go on vacation and find that all the kids at the restaurant—I'm not saying all by mistake, absolutely all the kids—were sitting with a cell phone. I mean, there were no more children playing in the yard, bothering the waiters, there were children sitting with their cell phones and I started to observe this phenomenon and I said to my wife, have you seen how many children there are? I mean, it's incredible. I couldn't When did this happen? What year was it?

[00:08:58]Well, basically 2020, that is, the first summer that we were able to go on vacation. I went to Sicily and I remember my wife and I were in restaurants and there was this whole situation that I was noticing.

[00:09:11]So I started studying the phenomenon again, discovering a whole series of scientific data that were already known, 5 years ago, 6 years ago.

[00:09:23]But eh with great surprise, except for a researcher that I later met, we are also we are we write to each other regularly, no one, I mean no one was committed to proposing something and so my wife and I decided to do this campaign outside the screens and a whole other world where [clears throat] eh we set ourselves the goal of, in short, informing parents of What does it mean to put a cell phone in the hands of a child? You said train or inform parents. [snorting] So, uh, training is the next step we're looking for. In October we will do a somewhat experimental workshop with parents and children.

[00:10:17]Well, for now, to inform, that is, in the sense that the channel and the site give advice in the form, the book eh digintossicato was written precisely for this purpose, that is, it is a problem to start an activity where you want to educate your child about cell phones if you don't have all the information. So the book was written, um, exactly with... So, I'll give you an example, just so I can also give a bit of reality. I am a boy who grew up in Grato Soio. Gratosio was very famous in the 70s for heroin dealing and deaths, okay? it was a working-class neighborhood of Milan. Well, the parents, [clears throat] if you said "But your son" I do n't know, he's there with long hair, a bit strange, they didn't know what drugs were, until their son either died or was stolen from their house, that is, there were events [clears throat] they weren't prepared. Parents in the 70s, thankfully, were not prepared for the devastation of heroin.

[00:11:26]I think that parents today are not prepared with screen time, that is, they don't know what it means to put a cell phone, a tablet, or park a child. Did you understand? Today I was in a supermarket and there was a child in the cart with his cell phone, the parents were very calm, doing what they had to do.

[00:11:49]So there is no awareness of what path they have started their their their their child.

[00:11:59]And so the campaign was born from here, the book was born, the commitments were born. we have reached more than 40 events, eh 1500 books arrived in the hands of the parents who eh and so this this is then in short the activity and I continue to study the subject, I continue to study the subject and I continue to delve into it always discovering new things. Well, the question I asked you was obviously, let's say, rhetorical, in the sense that having two children, I have a nine-year-old and an 11-year-old, for a few years I have found myself having to inform the parents of the other children of the damages or the risks or, in short, of everything that lies behind technology. For many I give up right away, for others I might try, with those closest to me I try, always in my own way. And for me, for example, I use different methods.

[00:13:16]Regardless of this, the central point I wanted to address with you was precisely the need to educate parents, because I think the doubt that comes to mind is that we find ourselves in a completely new situation, that is, in many ways, where the real problem is the parents, in the sense that the child is not born with a phone in hand, that is, the child is not born with a tablet in hand, the child is not born with indefinite access to the PC, with a PC, a restaurant, or his own private tablet. That is, there is a war to be fought behind it that is not at all simple, because there are a lot of people who, in addition to not having the slightest idea, also have this added to their lack of responsibility and therefore are dependent on things, to the point of being deprived of responsibility even for the education of their children and therefore they entrust them with a phone, say, "Bye, keep your phone, go and do what you want, go and close it yourself." [laughter] Exactly.

[00:14:26]No, then there are really many species, as you said, of parent. I was once asked at a conference, "But what do you think you're going to achieve?"

[00:14:34]No, I mean, given how parents are, how people are, then let's say that probably the mother who makes the video with her son on YouTube where he gets slapped and that's because he's nice, because then maybe with the mother I don't know how much I can get to her, I mean she almost seems happy, no, about the fact that she appears with him, so however... But there could also be that mother who is insecure, having a bit of an idea that something is not going well, and it happened, having the correct information is like saying protected. That is, five other mothers tell her, "Oh no, don't worry, your child is normal, it's just the period." No, he says, but my daughter vacuums with her cell phone, looking at her cell phone, and we never talk. She's always on her cell phone, always looking at her cell phone, and when she was worried, other parents said, "Oh no, look, that's how it is, these are the times, Generation Z." So she gets in touch with the campaign, does some research and finds out that it 's not true. So his perception, his idea was correct and this is the typical parent who I imagine benefits from the campaign, right? That is, the search for solutions that are also willing to make sacrifices. Because it's a job, you understand? Sure, sure. Educating children is also a job, well, it's work, no, and well, now in September I'll be under the authority of a councilor to do an activity at the nursery, so that we really get to work with the parents when they 're children. Okay? Today the child arrives at nursery school, he's not crying because his mother has gone away, he's crying because he's gone away from his cell phone, because his mother has been putting it in his hand since morning to do his chores.

[00:16:29]But hey, so let's start with very small children. Well, there's also the Italian Society of Pedagogists that has drawn up the guidelines and what should happen is that today the mother takes the child to the pediatrician. Scorp, pedagogists, pediatricians, non-pedagogists. Bring the pediatrician, the pediatrician says it's okay, does he weigh okay, what does he eat, what doesn't he eat, how much time does he spend in front of a screen? And no, zero, ma'am, zero up to 5 years or 3 years zero from 3 one hour a week, right? And so they should also receive this type of input. Hopefully, given the totality of input, before it was completely free, now in school they ca n't use it. In high school they can't use it starting from, that is, little by little there should be an invitation. Then there are also indicators of people who, while doing the kids detox for three days, turn off their cell phones and go do something else, they realize how beautiful life is even without them, right? Here is an initiative in France.

[00:17:41]In France, there's an initiative in May that goes 10 days without a screen, it's called disassin and it's run by the school, the school that promotes it, where children have a sort of table where every day they report on the time they've spent in front of any screen and the goal is to achieve zero, that is, to have no screen at all, to not look at any screen for 10 days in a row and then they make a report of what it is. They talk about it at school, clearly it 's all supported by the school system.

[00:18:21]Maybe that's a good idea. Spread the word in Italy too.

[00:18:25]Yes, yes, yes. No, then that's a good idea.

[00:18:30]Look, in this campaign, for example, I managed to find a middle school teacher who had to do a painstaking job to create a regulation for trips where cell phones were not brought.

[00:18:48]Okay? Meeting resistance from parents, because the parent says "But how can my child go away without a cell phone?"

[00:18:54]There is the core of the school. If anything happens we can call him.

[00:18:58]First. Second, that is, the trip is designed precisely to have conversations and see, right? If you bring your cell phone, the purpose of the trip is defeated. What, what, what do you take a child on a trip if he then spends all day looking at his cell phone? And then he was so good at finding all the regulations, all the things, getting to the point that the mothers who said "No, I do n't want my daughter not to go and say without a cell phone, ma'am, your daughter is staying at home". and having all the character coverage, because today even the school has problems, that is, you make a mistake, you file a complaint and so on and I asked him if I could have this regulation and I have it I have it I have it promoted, I put it on to help the other teachers, right? Because then some schools actually asked me for help saying "There are parents who really need to be explained that it's not right". No.

[00:19:49]Eh, but my son has a cell phone, I do n't want him to give it up. I understand, but if he keeps it on it's inevitable.

[00:19:54]Anyone who has a notification takes it and looks at it.

[00:19:58]It's pretty hard for him to be uneducated.

[00:20:00]Certain.

[00:20:02]Let's get a little closer to the topic of the evening, in the sense of the aspect we're touching on now, which is that of parental education, and which in any case necessarily reflects on that of their children, and the exposure of the parents themselves reflects on the exposure of their children, exposure to the screen because in any case, many parents when you invite them to dinner have their phones on the table, they answer any phone calls they receive during dinner, because it's not the first time you go out to eat with friends and you spend 20 minutes on the phone in the restaurant while perhaps you're talking about something completely different, and so the behavior of the children is a mirror of that of the parents. The problem, however, is that children in general, not having a developed cerebral cortex yet, but I myself often use this term, a developed intellectual immune system, that is, we all need to have an intellectual immune system, that is, to consider our mind as an empire, I'm just saying a bit of a quote, right? like an untouchable place, like a temple to which we give access only to a select circle of information.

[00:21:32]When you open a screen, scroll for 20 minutes and watch videos that last 3 to 6 seconds, you give free access to a set of information that has nothing to do with it and that is absolutely beyond your control. sensations, information, adrenaline and other various things. In short, this behavior is highly risky. But what happens is that on the other side we don't have men, let's say, like us, it's not a dialogue that you open to dialogue, for example, at a restaurant, you let in any information that comes to you from the people who are at the table with you or from friends at a birthday party, at an anniversary, etc. etc. Instead, it gives free access in the vast majority of cases to very targeted, very violent, extremely, uh, perfected industrial marketing to enter your brain and activate certain mechanisms very often without the knowledge of those who see them, simply, unfortunately, to sell a product to have a compulsive purchase on the Internet or to create potential customers, that is, to start especially with children, and here we return to the argument that surely everyone is more interested in creating children addicted to a certain type of purchase, right? eh starting to establish certain habits from a very young age like buying online, like eh buying certain things, turning them into customers, right?

[00:23:24]Which I would say historically is the first time in history, at least modern history, that a 5/10 year old child is a consumer, a customer who has purchasing power, decision-making power, a budget, etc., etc., right? Or a chance to create a request that will be fulfilled.

[00:23:53]No, the problem is that they have a credit card or that they have access to the Internet. I'm telling you this because I have neighbors who are like that, okay, I'm not talking about stuff I'm making up, I'm telling you because 9-year-olds have a valid credit card in their phone and they can buy, okay, even if only on small budgets, okay?

[00:24:14]even if they have €5, €10, I don't know, I didn't ask how much money they have per week that they can spend there, but this is already extremely worrying for me, but it is already a symptom of the fact that they are potential consumers then as adults, that is, they will behave accordingly, indeed they will often further increase their budget on the internet, their number of purchases, etc. etc. behind it there is a system, no, that we have you sent me an email that made me click a little to call you for a chat in which you talked about surveillance capitalism, which is a book that I like a lot, which I have cited several times also in my book that I wrote or in short a system of surplus behaviors, right? the fact that there are products that are conceived months in advance to create demand, that is, they are first built, the market is shaped and then the product is produced, made.

[00:25:23]and I liked to talk about it a bit with you, starting from the very concept that started this discussion, that is, the fact that children are becoming customers with a budget, with a budget behind them.

[00:25:39]The parents themselves are creating these child buyers.

[00:25:47]So, let's start from a point, shall we? I mean, what's the big problem with screens? The big problem with screens is that viewing a screen, um, distances itself from what is optimal communication, and this distancing creates a sort of hypnosis, right?

[00:26:14]Let's take a practical example.

[00:26:17]When you feel good with someone, it's because communication takes place with this person with incoming and outgoing communication flows that are balanced and with the same interest, right? That is, if you take into consideration a person with whom you feel comfortable, you will see that this person feels comfortable with you because you are talking to them, you are listening to them fairly. But when you find yourself—I had the example in my days when I was presenting the project—when on Monday morning you have the person at the coffee machine telling you all about his or her weekend that you don't care at all and that you should politely listen to him or her—at that moment this excessive incoming communication creates a moment of discomfort, a slight annoyance, drowsiness, that is the beginning of hypnosis. The cell phone is a continuous reception of information that causes an inability, a sort of hypnosis. That is, when you receive so much information, you are not able to evaluate this information because you are not able to relate experiences. that is, the true, um, learning ability, the true cognitive ability is based on one thing, on the fact that you give me information, I can look at it in my experience or in reality and say Davide is right, he gave me this true information. This is eh understanding.

[00:28:08]We as beings need to understand things. When this comprehension, when instead I am in front of a video and I continue to absorb information like continuous continuous continuous videos, I'll give you an example, children's cartoons now no longer have an ending, when we had children that's folk, right? it was finished. Now cartoons no longer have the end written on them. They make them on purpose so that the child always has them, that is, he doesn't see the end, he doesn't close the time and therefore it is a continuum, so he is not able, the child, to take and analyse things.

[00:28:49]This also poses a teaching problem because in learning you must be able to, if I explain the lever to you, know where to use the lever. So I'll explain the lever to you, I'll show you a real swing and you'll understand the lever. If instead I explain the lever to you and you don't see a lever and you can't even look at the lever because your optical capacity is limited. There are a whole series of studies, no, on the very fact that if you keep your gaze at 30 cm for 3 hours, when you take away your cell phone you can't see 300 m, you can't see 100 m, you can't see 50 m. You really have a capacity, in the eye a muscle that is atrophied.

[00:29:31]So these children find themselves with this information that they can't evaluate independently of everything else. But this is true for both children and adults. But in children the problem is more serious because we put them in first and then, as you said, they don't have this ability to evaluate.

[00:29:54]Now what happens when they enter inside this this this subject?

[00:30:01]So, for any person who sells, who is a salesman, he knows that the moment he manages to find the interest of the person he has to sell to, half the sale is made. Okay? But the moment the customer says this thing here could solve that problem for me, he has already made half the sale because he has found interest. Okay?

[00:30:28]The sequence must have attention to the person, interest.

[00:30:34]Let's take a silly example. The three- card monte, the three-card monte game at the stations, they steal your money. Is David present? Okay. Do you know when the guy loses?

[00:30:42]When he says, "I think I figured out where it is." He puts in the interest, puts in his finger and loses the money. Up to that point he is not a customer. When he says "Hmm I think I figured out where it is." He put interest on the game, so interest is the turning point of a sale.

[00:31:01]Now, first there was the salesman, good, the huckster, the marketing of the years before the last century, right? Which was developed by trying to find out what the person's point of interest is and therefore surveys were carried out to find out the interests of the majority of people. Now what happens with the internet? That when you watch videos, click likes, do all the iterative activities it suggests, you are providing information of the color you like, then they are working on it, that is, whoever is behind it collects this information, this enormous volume of information and can then create a store for you, an offer that becomes so personalized that it is easy to find your interest.

[00:31:54]Ok, here I'll interrupt you for a moment because it's important because I've made at least two or three videos for some people, one of which about two years ago was also taken up by another guy who works in artificial intelligence.

[00:32:08]I never responded because I didn't have time at the time, but it was interesting and maybe if the kids who watch us now are interested, watch it on the channel. I made a video in which I said artificial intelligence doesn't exist, in the sense that it's a sort of very complex algorithm, that is, a set, it's the evolution, let's say, of the algorithm, right? um a system programmed by humans and used for certain functions. After us we have some who are speech synthesizers, there is one who deals with writing, giving answers, there is one who deals with data analysis. For example, in this case we're talking about now, um, when we 're in front of the screen, many people naively think that the thing that matters, that Google, TikTok, Instagram need, is the name, surname, address or knowing, I don't know, if they use a bank card or if they pay etc. Those things don't matter at all to the person on the other end. Let's say those are metadata that yes, they are passed on but they are not the point of the situation. What matters is the so-called waste data, that is, if it is the implicit data, that is, how much time you spend in front of a post, what type of post you spend the longest on, because they know perfectly well when you look at a screen, how long you spend on that post and how long it takes you to move on to that post. For example, they know when, what time you unlock your phone, I don't know how many times you unlock it and why you unlock it, what notifications make you switch from one application to another, but what are the reasons that make you open a certain application rather than another? What's the first thing you do when you click on that app?

[00:34:03]but also the type of tone of voice you use when you speak to the various artificial intelligences, Siri, non- Siri, etc. etc. or your heartbeats, your breathing, the hesitations while you type, when you write a name or maybe you pause for a fraction of a second before writing another word.

[00:34:27]That time is synonymous with hesitation, that is, all this type of data is collected, processed by artificial intelligence and large algorithms to extract results that are used to classify and label people and then sell and propose certain products to them. I just wanted to add this to this part because maybe many people think that artificial intelligence is, you know, something really abstract, sometimes even, you know, intelligent, that it's something Yes.

[00:35:01]No, no, I've prepared a series of definitions here, including precisely what an algorithm is, right? I mean, what is an algorithm? simply a series of information that is outlined. The problem, like anything else, is who is responsible for creating this algorithm, that is, what instructions it gives. Because if I write in the algorithm, "Avoid collecting data from Davide Cenci," it will automatically give me an evaluation of the subject, whatever subject I want to do, but when Davide Cenci arrives, it skips, and so it could be Davide Cenci, it could be the Encyclopedia Britannico, it could be anything I decide to put there.

[00:35:47]Now, one of the most worrying applications is the fact that all this information can be there, that is, if it is in the hands of, let's take an example, a dishonest politician, okay?

[00:36:05]This dishonest politician should campaign with another politician who is not dishonest, a good person. Now, if he could find out all the things I care about, let's say I have a dog and he can find out how often I buy food, my, my, well, my friends on Facebook and then the fact that I find out about the doctor, the vet and so on.

[00:36:34]Well, he could come in with artificial intelligence, send me an email falsely creating a newspaper saying that my political opponent wants to put a restriction on dogs. Okay? What's happening?

[00:36:50]that I receive this email, since it is the only email that arrives to me, that is, my other little politician will never be able to know and it is possible that he manages to wipe out the votes and create a black market, he is technically called, without the other politician knowing, because if it had come out in a newspaper he could have, how to say, eh make a contrary statement, eh do something. In this case, we could have the entire population receive an email with a fake newspaper and it could remain completely unknown because it reaches only you. The email that makes you decide that the politician who is his opponent is not trustworthy and should not be voted for.

[00:37:42]This is an extreme but it can be achieved. No, no, but in my opinion one of the other central arguments is precisely the inequality of knowledge and power, that is, the one on our side, so to speak, with the one on the side of those who hold the keys to the algorithm, those who create the algorithm.

[00:38:03]Certain.

[00:38:04]Whoever creates the algorithm, to get back to the point, knows perfectly well, knows much better than us what makes our children cry, what captures their attention most, when they feel alone, what they go to turn on the computer. Well, this type of data is in the hands of people we don't know at all.

[00:38:30]That is, what can you do with this data?

[00:38:33]I mean, we really owe it to the algorithm, I say it in the introduction of almost every video of mine. I mean when I say you ended up here, I say hello, I say good morning, good evening if you've arrived here, you ended up here because you stumbled upon the algorithm. Many times the algorithm knows more about you than you know yourself, that is, the algorithm knows us much better than we know ourselves because it has studied and stored an enormous amount of data about us that is physically on a hard disk that no one even knows exactly where it is geolocated, in California or maybe at the Undersea North Pole or I don't know where and why no one knows by the way, but in that hard disk there is our past recorded from the first click we made on our first keyboard 20 years ago, okay? And this is happening now with children who arrive on a screen, on an iPad, on etc. etc. Certain.

[00:39:39]So, I think one thing that I just do n't want to do, like, create a kind of terror is the fact that artificial intelligence finds, like, interest, it's normal, because then there's the guy who says, "But you know, I can write a letter to all my customers in 2 minutes with one click." That is, more than one person is finding, how shall I say, an interest, no, in this artificial intelligence, even an enthusiasm.

[00:40:14]So, telling people not to use artificial intelligence is nonsense. But what's the point?

[00:40:22]one could reduce their screen time and therefore have an increased capacity for evaluation, because this is the problem, that is, by spending a lot of time in front of a screen, by spending a lot of time our children watching eh reil etc. etc., they are not able to have an evaluation, they are not able, when information reaches them, to have the capacity to separate what could be true from what could be false.

[00:40:50]So fighting I think that artificial intelligence will change. So, 5 years ago when I started this campaign there was the metaverse, do you remember? There was a colleague.

[00:41:01]Yes, yes.

[00:41:01]At this point it seemed like everyone in the schools was going to have this at any moment because it was so cool. You put it on, you could have been inside ancient Rome, right?

[00:41:13]I was totally terrified of something like that, you know? Because he's a child, you put him in that box to play, to learn, things like that. I mean, it's crazy, but this stuff, billions of investments, as they said, in the end went nowhere. I then think in my good heart, do-goodism, that eh, spiritual beings ultimately respond positively, right? And so all this mechanistic stuff is not going to have the advantage that it has. But in any case, to provide a solution for parents, what should be done is to reduce screen time, that is, there are things you can do and re-establish communication with your children, okay? So whatever you often Donato, sorry to interrupt you, you often Donato talk about substitution, right? as an alternative, that is, to replace screen time with something more interesting, something alternative, because it's important, right? I believe that for parents it is not deprivation, because if you start by saying no, look, don't don't look, you can't look, you can't do, unfortunately we know what I am, I came to exactly this conclusion. Since screen time creates this hypnosis due to unbalanced communication, that is, you spend hours and hours, the boy spends hours and hours, the solution to this addiction is human communication.

[00:42:45]Now there's this researcher called Simone Lanza, where he begins his book with something that I really liked and that will be part of my workshop, which says the first thing a child does is look into his mother's eyes. So the fact that the gaze is the primary communicative activity that is created in man. Okay? that's what differentiates us from primates, it seems from what he writes.

[00:43:13]And so if you're at the table and the television is on, you don't watch yourself, while if you turn off the television and start watching, apart from finding out that your son was there, Barbara, you didn't know because you never saw him, you never watch him, but he starts watching you. Once upon a time, at a fair like that, there was a workshop to do. I invented it, I had some parents looking at each other with their children, just looking at each other, doing nothing but looking at each other. This thing here was, well, how can I say, they started laughing, to rediscover, because that's the first thing, that is, re-establishing a dialogue within the family.

[00:43:53]It doesn't matter if the child wants to watch cartoons, it's important that the parent is always with him in a good dialogue, so that if he sees something strange, something happens, through dialogue the parent can always re-establish some order, eh? and above all, also involve him in activities that he does, because nowadays it seems that as soon as children get bored, oh my goodness, he's boring my son, he can help you, he can do something with you, he can, I mean, there are a thousand things, right?

[00:44:29]in quotation marks, I really like a quote by Fallacci where she says "With technology we have lost this magnificent thing that is boredom, because in boredom you invent games." I remember going to the South by car for 10 hours with my parents and my brother and I in the back we would invent games. So we play and play and play to pass the time and there was nothing so catastrophic.

[00:44:54]on your site, you also have a practical guide to download, right? I liked talking because outside the screens you have this section that is, I think it's specifically for parents, a practical guide.

[00:45:11]Yes, for parents, a practical guide.

[00:45:14]You say, tired of seeing your child side by side with screens, you discover bringing him back to real life. Here you just need to enter your email address and then download a completely free guide. this PDF.

[00:45:26]Now, Davide, the first point I propose is to evaluate your own addiction, because it becomes quite complex to say to a child, "Hey, look, now, Dad, you [snorting] so look at yourself and start being an example yourself, you know? You, but if you yourself can understand the benefits you can get from having screen time under control, okay? Turn off your cell phone. Before you were talking about going to a restaurant with your cell phone, but at my house when people come over I say, 'Look at the cell phones on the table, see right on the table. Don't put your cell phones away, turn them off in your bag, you're with me, the television is never on, eh! I mean, we're here to be together, otherwise come to my house, otherwise stay at your house with your cell phone, watch TV, you're at my house and not really eh I have to hear a message.

[00:46:26]Listen to it, but it really is urgent. Then you turn off your cell phone and put it away, you silence it, you understand? Because it is also a violation, in my opinion, of good manners, that is, of good manners. Did I come to visit myself or did I come to visit you?

[00:46:42]you are with me. The same thing goes for children. You must treat your children as if they were the best guests you have in your home. So you turn off your cell phone, they turn off their cell phone, and so this guide has seven tips because 7 days detoxed in 7 days is a challenge where you then create a game with them, it's made for teenagers, for parents who have teenagers, so you get together with them to create this thing here and if you're good and they have n't gone too far, you can really, how to say, at least create something different from your own not having any dialogue.

[00:47:25]I used it once with a neighbor who had this problem. I'll end with this thing here because I told a little girl, a friend of my daughter, I told her, "Look at the technology, that technology you had in your hand, because she was selling me her phone like a great technology we had given her, etc., etc. Next to me I had a dad who was holding a console in his hand, he has a 6-year-old child and I, my children having neither one nor the other, um, my children were angry, they were crying, one came back home because his friends preferred the phone to him, right? My son started crying, he says, "Nobody wants to play with me and everyone is either on the phone or on the consoles." and he came back home crying. I went downstairs, after a while I accompanied her. In short, I told him with this little girl, I said, "Look, that technology there is for the poor." I mean, you tell him that technology there is a rich person, because this was a little girl who was very, uh, focused with the focus on money, right?

[00:48:32][laughter] about the fact that this phone was worth a lot of money and I said to him, "Look, that's technology for the poor, for people who can't do things." In fact, you look at people who do searches, people who go to the big fashion center to watch the match, you look at the tutorials he gives you on skiing, on things, you look at the great adventures, the trips, you look at people who travel because you can't afford to do them. These things, the people who are really rich, who can afford them, do things, they don't look at them on their phones, right?

[00:49:09]And there I shocked both the child and the parent. My aim was to shock the parent who was next to me [laughter] because he had his console and thought he had bought who knows what. Wow, you spent €300. Eh, it would have been better if I went on a weekend trip with the whole family with those €300, instead of making your life at home stupid. But put like that, you put it more or less like this.

[00:49:33]Okay.

[00:49:34]And nothing, come on, It was only right to conclude by joking about an anecdote. I thank you so much for coming here, Donato, to introduce this topic. I'll see you in September, when perhaps you'll start another chat, if we can coincide with this new project of yours.

[00:49:54]I'd be very happy to bring you back to the channel. Perhaps we have many topics in common, some interesting ones that you address in your books, which I think are obligatory to share.

[00:50:08]I hope you're available in September.

[00:50:14]Yes, yes. No, I'm interested in whether these things can be of help to parents, because then, you know, maybe the campaign's attitude might seem critical, but it's totally the opposite. That is, the campaign realizes that parents were caught off guard, so to speak, and weren't ready, and so it's about providing them with information and practical advice. I'm not a scientist, I'm a person who lives with a grandparent, and so I propose practical things to do, knowing all the difficulties involved. But I know that once the dialogue is re-established, it 's a pleasure. All the efforts that have been made will, well, be rewarded. There.

[00:51:09]All right. Thank you so much, Donato. Come on, I'll leave you.

[00:51:13]Thank you. Have a good evening and good evening to everyone. Okay, and see you next time. See you next time.