The experience of Elisa at the “Digital Emotions” training course in Hungary

We sent Elisa to Pákozd, Hungary, for the Erasmus+ training course ‘Digital Emotions’ in March 2023.

This is her testimony!

In a world increasingly flooded of outputs, fake news, and social media’s war of clickbait, I feel overwhelmed. It’s like I stopped for a while, and I realized that I was losing the meaning of the “like”.
What this like is about?
Usually, we use social medias to take a break and enjoy a little bit more our free time with watching funnies videos or discovering new trends around the world.
Now, do you think that all of that is going to become established in a wrong way?
How do you feel when your pic is not going to reach the amount of like that you expected? Or your friend didn’t have time to reply to your new post but on the second hand he or she posted a new story with other friends? Or you cannot wait the reply of the text you sent to your boyfriend/girlfriend about the news, and you get nervous of the late reply.

We are going to pay more attention to what we post and how we decided to feel about than the real emotions that we concretely are experiencing. The pandemic situation then didn’t help us because we needed to introduce the technology stuff also for our job or our studies etc. so we lost in a way the joy to be together.
So, I decided to take part of this training course to understand better the meaning of all of that. I took a flight to Pákozd, in Hungary, and I met Európa Ifjúsága Egyesület which was the hosting organization.
Promote the digital wellbeing to enhance digital skills, emotional well-being and to increase the skills that are necessary and useful in youthwork were the goals of this project.

I took part of numerous activities, most of them were super enjoyable and it helped me to focus better on the topic but in a comfortable way. Also, the hosting organization and all the other participants from Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria, Spain, Poland, Estonia and Hungary of course, were super friendly and we reached a very lovely connection which was important to feel more involved and learn better.
We learnt more about our emotions in this era full of technology, how feel more in contact with our body and our mind and how be more emphatic with others with active listening, how debate in constructive way and how build a friendly team.

Personally, I learnt a lot about myself as well, how to use the best way of my emotions in the online space and how mediate when I feel overwhelmed thanks to the Mindfulness activity.
I’m always travelling around, and my friends and my family are not living in the same city or country so have my cellphone always with me is useful and make me feel safe at the same time. The problem now is how it is going to be the correct way to express myself and my emotions when I feel for example alone or I expect that people around me has the same point of view of me, the same way to express their self.
Those expectations, those emotions are important and is right to focus first on the present moment and on the second hand to give the right importance to other’s person feeling.

In general, as well, I really enjoyed discovering the culture of Hungary; the food, the tradition music, all the places that we visited.

I can finally say that this experience was amazing! Imagine the power of this kind of projects that in only 7 days created an incredible space to learn about the topic, people from different countries and ourselves as well. It is an adventure that I really suggest experiencing.

Elisa