On July 24, the VK platform of the project “Safe Information Environment of Childhood” hosted latest webinar of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, this time dedicated to the topic of psychological support for teenagers of the i-Generation. The guest of the meeting was Tatyana Polovkova, the Head of the project-application “I can” and the Director of the Foundation “National Resources of Education”.
The website of the already mentioned project is located at the address Я-могу.дети (I can dot children) – in Cyrillic domain .ДЕТИ (dot DETI, which means “children” in Russian). We remind you that “Smart Internet” Foundation is the administrator of the .ДЕТИ.
Thus, the current meeting was a continuation of the conversation that began in March at the webinar “10 years with .ДЕТИ”, dedicated to the anniversary of the Internet space for children and teenagers. At the time, authors of useful and safe web resources created in it were invited to participate in the broadcast.
The application “I can” in 24/7 mode offers teenagers a psychological support program. Here you can undergo an initial diagnosis to formulate your problems and request for work with a specialist, find articles and videos about self-esteem, emotions, relationships with people – essentially a guide to growing up, find recommendations for self-help, exercises, a mood diary, books and films, as well as free psychological aid services in your region.
“The most important thing for us is not just supporting the kids during this difficult period of growing up, but also the opportunity to explain to them that they can and should seek help first and foremost from their parents and specialized professionals. The app has instructions on how to tell your parents about your problem and which specific specialists work with certain problems,” Tatyana Polovkova said. “A significant part of the app is an anonymous chat with a psychologist. And most of the children who contact us find answers to their questions.”
In the three years of the “I Can” app’s operation, 262,000 people have downloaded it, and more than 13,500 teenagers and 2,000 parents have contacted the chat for advice. The main topics of requests include: depressed emotional state, stress, anxiety, relationships with parents, suicide and self-harm, romantic relationships, school, studies, exams.
While discussing the objectives and features of the project, we also talked to Tatyana Polovkova about how digital technologies make psychological help more accessible, what kind of person is a teenager and why it is important not to leave a child, a representative of the i-Generation, alone with their big and small difficulties, what should a teenager do if they become a victim of cyberbullying, whether social networks are really addictive and, moreover, are the cause of psychological/psychiatric problems in children.
“Adolescence is the age between childhood and youth. A teenager is a person for whom parents cease to be an authority. Their task is to reformat everything in their life – from their body to relationships, to leave their parental family in order to one day build their own. And a teenager of the Internet era is a person whose socialization occurs spontaneously, who goes through a crisis and makes their choice in a very hostile environment. A huge amount of absolutely harmful, false information is poured on modern children, as well as attempts to involve them in destructive strategies. We want as many teenagers as possible, including thanks to our work, to be spared the fate of living someone else’s life,” Tatyana Polovkova said.
Recordings of all webinars of the Coordination Center from the “Safe Information Environment for Children” series are available in the official VK community of .ДЕТИ.