Lessons about Digital Addiction: "Who controls Who?"

In schools of the East Kazakhstan region, lessons were held on the urgent problem of our time — digital addiction. The organizer was the KSU "East Kazakhstan Regional Scientific and Methodological Center for Informatization and Educational Development "Yerken" of the East Kazakhstan Region Education Department. The event was conducted in the format of interviews for students of grades 5-10 in two languages (Kazakh and Russian) with identical content. The speaker was Armangul Maksutovna Dzhembayeva, a specialist at the Shygys Center for Preventive Medicine HLS Medical Institution.
During the conversation, the speaker explained how addiction differs from active phone use: irritability without a gadget, sleep disorders, attention and live communication should be alarming. Teenagers are vulnerable due to the incomplete development of the prefrontal cortex responsible for self-control, and short videos (tiktok, rils, shorts) cause rapid dopamine addiction.
Special attention was paid to statistics: according to the National Center for Public Health of Kazakhstan, 12.7% of schoolchildren already have signs of problematic use of social networks, and 56.5% spend two or more hours in them every day. The speaker stressed the importance of digital hygiene and agreements, not prohibitions. Parents are advised to introduce rules (not to sit with the phone at dinner, limit screen time), and children should learn to control time themselves.
The impact of gadgets on health was also discussed: sleep, physical activity, concentration suffer, and teenage girls may have cycle disorders. A separate section is devoted to artificial intelligence: it is not evil, but you need to use it after an independent attempt, developing critical thinking.
The main conclusion of the meeting was the question: "Is the phone with me or am I with the phone?" Students were encouraged to manage technology rather than obey it.