No smartphone under 20, Russian priest says

“I suggest that all parents who care about the fate of their children postpone the use of any smartphones for up to 20 years until the child is finally formed as a person,” Priest Fyodor Lukyanov –head of the patriarchal commission on family issues, protection of motherhood and childhood– writes in an article published on the commission’s website and about which the Russian press agency Interfax reports.

According to the priest’s observations, early acquaintance with mobile devices leads to severe damage to the child’s psyche. “This electronic device becomes an extension to the consciousness of a young person, and he feels flawed without it already; he feels that he is deprived of the opportunity to communicate, deprived of the opportunity to receive new information,” the priest writes. He adds that the book is the best substitute for mobile devices.

Shooting at school

The perception of a text from a book carrier often allows a child to receive a completely different intellectual development, Lukyanov writes. Children do not read blogs, he adds. “As a rule, they sit on Instagram, YouTube, and other resources that provide ready-made video content.” According to the priest, it means that they primitivize their personality, their reactions and become, of course, easy bait for death groups, for groups popularizing things like shooting at school, popularising the humiliation of classmates.”

The child “actually finds himself captured by these images, he doesn’t know how to work with them precisely because he doesn’t know how to read,” the head of patriarchal commission writes, offering to supply children and adolescents with simple push-button telephones for communication.