Family seminar warns about parents’ use of cellphones

The impacts of technologies, of screens, on family formation and child education are highlighted at the 6th International Family and Education Seminar, right now, this Saturday (the 23rd). In Curitiba, the maximum permitted capacity at the Poty Lazzarotto Auditorium of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum is filled with participants, and others follow online.

Five talks are expected throughout the day. The first (Angela, already held) and the second (Ana Maria, in progress) skirt the pre-pandemic world, when an unprecedented stage of digitization was being experienced.

For Ana Maria Araujo de Venegas (doctor of philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome), equipment and network connections create a new relationship of the individual with the world, in which a cellphone is capable of ordering us: “find a Wi-Fi now!”

Regarding what we lived before the coronavirus, “medicine has defied death many times. With each new discovery, we live longer,” the speaker recalls.

Parents’ responsibility

In an interview with Lab Journalism 2030, the national secretary for the Family, Angela Gandra Martins (doctor of law from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), considers that parents must assume responsibilities for their children’s education, because they are protagonists in education. It is not, however, a matter of hierarchical control. Angela Gandra Martins, National Secretary for the Family:

We are talking about a life project that children freely choose, and for which they have their parents’ support.

As for the use of technologies and the possible imbalance in time devoted to them, Angela catches some parents off guard. Angela:

When we talk about the problem of screens, we are not only talking about what children watch, but about some parents’ preference for the cellphone over family life.

For information on the full program, whether there are places available today, or other service matters, use WhatsApp, at this link. The Seminar’s schedule is here.