SUNSET OF EMPATHY, TOOLS AND DIGITAL FAIRY TALES IN THE POST-MODERN AND POST-PANDEMIC SCENARIO

Abstract

Discovered and explored in depth only at the end of the 20th century, since for most of the last century scientific reflection was polarized on the cognitive and metacognitive dimension of the person, the emotional-affective dimension of the person, and consequently the socio-relational one, has recently come under severe attack by a conjuncture of massive and relational traumas in which the pandemic has represented the most impervious watershed, especially with regard to the existential evolution and life project of adolescents and young people. Years after the beginning of Covid-19 and, more generally, due to a multi-level crisis (social, educational-parental, environmental, etc.) faced most of the time alone and without any useful tools to embark on a real path of assisted resilience, national and international research has shown how some dysfunctional reactions such as the increase of anxious states and compassionate rather than empathic relational modes are still observable in many minors and fragile young people, but at the same time adaptive to the complicated picture we have described. The widespread and precocious use of social networks and other devices, together with a family culture that seems to prefer a technological bailiwick to an adequate educational orientation, undoubtedly puts adolescents in front of new risks such as internet addiction and prolonged social isolation, which make them lose full contact with their emotional intelligence and, therefore, with the importance of 'recognizing, naming and governing' emotions. In this contribution, on the basis of the evidence that emerged from encounters with preadolescents and adolescents before and after the pandemic and thanks to the results obtained from a training-research experience conducted with the students of the Academic Course to become Teachers during the A.A. 2021-2022 centered on the autobiographical-narrative methodology, where through the revisitation of fairy tales by means of digital tools, the aim is to describe a didactic-educational pathway that looks beyond the "sunset" of empathy and promotes peer interaction, narrative and reflexive practices, the recognition of differences and the demolition of stereotypes from an inclusive viewpoint.