Experts ask for psychologists at school, not metal detectors, to combat youth aggression

No to metal detectors in schools. Yes to the psychologist at school to support young people, who are increasingly crushed between addiction to violence and a spirit of emulation. Psychiatrists and criminologists are wondering about recent cases of attacks in schools, most recently the one foiled in Lamezia Terme. And they launch an appeal in favor of listening.

"The temporal proximity of the cases shows that emulation among very young people has a role. Just as the growing difficulty we see in social relationships and the habituation to violence, which is increasingly normalized, plays a role", Marco Dugato, senior researcher at the Transcrime Criminology Studies Center of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, explains to ANSA. "Each news episode - he specifies - has specifics, but a transversal element is that of young people who experience isolation and social withdrawal, in which the online world becomes the place where they look for an identity. And some find it in groups and chats in which violence and abuse become dominant, because they give a false security".

The problem is understanding the reason for the increase in episodes and in what situations they arise. "We are recording - continues Dugato - a lowering of the age of the children involved and, at the same time, a lowering of the age of access to violent content on social media used by pre-adolescents or children. There is great interest in topics related to crimes, a morbid attention to news cases, through TV series</think>