“While the children are playing in the park, we talk about everything,” recalls Elisabet Garcia Permanyer, mother of children ages 7, 9 and 10. “One problem is screens and the fact that the child will have a cell phone by the time they reach the first year of ESO [12 años]”, Add. Garcia Permanyer created a WhatsApp group at the end of September because “the messages I receive are frightening; addiction problems, mental health, anorexia, suicide.” I wanted to share it with more parents.
He titled the chat with the name of his neighborhood and a motto: “Poblenou_adolescència lliure de mòbil.” Almost a month later, the group exploded and reached the WhatsApp limit of 1,024 participants. They don’t just come from the neighborhood, there are people from all over Barcelona. There are two overlapping goals behind this movement: removing cell phones from area high schools and ensuring that more families don’t automatically purchase a cell phone with Internet for their children once they turn 12 and start high school.
This Wednesday they organized their first face-to-face meeting. There were about 30 people and “we created a roadmap with suggestions and work assignments,” explains Xavier Casanovas, one of the parents present. You also have to decide whether to multiply the chats for each district of Barcelona.
A great song”
“I neither expected it, nor did I provoke anything, nor did I look for contacts,” says Garcia Permanyer. “He went alone. I only had the initiative to band together within my group. When I saw it grow so exponentially, I realized it was a great song,” he adds. A week ago, the coordinator of the family associations of 15 schools in the Gràcia district (Barcelona) launched a form for parents entitled “Minors and the use of mobile phones and social networks”. This Wednesday there were already 901 answers. The organizers have communicated to EL PAÍS the preliminary result of a question: “There are groups of families who propose that young people only have a smartphone at 16 years old, as recommended by the European Union.” How about?”. More than 70 % reacted positively. Only 10% believe that 16 years is “too late”.
More information
Marta Hernández, mother of a school in the same neighborhood, is behind this initiative. He saw that a similar format had worked at a charter school in Barcelona last year. “There, 99% said they didn’t want to give their children a cell phone or that it was because of social pressure if they did. Now they’re doing it without a cell phone for now,” Hernández says of this school. Your goal is to achieve the same in Gràcia and, why not, in Barcelona. “The problem is access to social networks. You are not mature enough. WhatsApp has been around for 16 years. What do we do if we give WhatsApp to a 12 year old child? Even if they don’t use it at school, they continue to cyberbully at home. Let’s be careful, families, and don’t give up a weapon that we wouldn’t give up if it were tobacco or alcohol. It is not regulated and we treat it as if nothing has happened. The day will come when it will not be given because of the evil it causes. It’s not a ban, it’s not a giving,” Hernández says.
In addition to these two initiatives, there are other family associations that are trying to join forces in other communities. In addition to other districts of Barcelona such as Sarrià or Eixample, there are similar groups in the province in Sant Cugat, Cardedeu, Sabadell and Girona. The debate eventually spread to chats from mothers and fathers from all over Spain. “We started with a WhatsApp group at school,” says Jaume Bombardó from Sant Cugat. “Then we went further, at the local level. Everything arises spontaneously and we have seen that the concern is general,” he adds.
The Basque pioneers
All of these Catalan cases occurred in 2023. But there are pioneers in Gipuzkoa. In the city of Tolosa, population 20,000, they have been organizing for two years to “think about the use of screens and not just cell phones, trying to delay the era of cell phone use,” says Orkatz Goenaga, one of their promoters. And they are not the first: at least in Zarautz and Usurbil they were ahead of them, and the influence of the media has given rise to other groups in Biscay. Have you been successful in these two years? “We haven’t quantified the results, but we see that previously no one from the first year of ESO came to Christmas without a cell phone and now they are the first to finish and there are still children without cell phones. “He is no longer the odd one out,” says Goenaga.
This concern in the Basque Country arose from fears of mental health and learning problems. The origin of this second wave in Catalonia lies in the “news”: chats were created primarily to exchange worrying information. “Suddenly there was a series of news that caused a certain scandal,” says Xavier Casanovas, explaining the possible reasons for this movement. “Presence in addition to networks is increasing. There is a post-pandemic effect, digitalization has taken hold with great force, and now that we are going out and returning to some normality, there is a certain rejection. And then he adds that there is further scientific evidence of the damage that screens cause at certain ages, of the addictions that arise among young people to mobile phones and networks, and of the social image pressure,” he adds.
In at least three EL PAÍS conversations with organizing parents, the name of Francisco Villar, a clinical psychologist and expert on suicide, came up: “I contacted Francisco Villar and he came to the school to give a lecture. More than 40 people came. “That’s where it all started,” says Marta Hernández, who says that about ten families in the school didn’t give their cell phones to their sixth-graders because of that conversation. “It’s extremist, but it makes you react. For me it is very clear that there are more visions, but there are many people who believe what he says,” he adds.
Villar published an article in this newspaper a week ago: “Cell phones must be banned until the age of 16,” was the headline. This psychologist has been interviewed dozens of times in the media and this Tuesday published a book called “How Screens Devour Our Children.” The main evidence he cites to request the ban is that in his hospital’s emergency rooms “treatment increased from 250 episodes of suicidal behavior (thoughts, threats, gestures and attempts) in 2014 to 1,000 episodes in 2022” . What is the “hidden cause” of this increase? “These screens rob them of the tools” to make the world a more livable place, he writes.
Is it that serious?
The introduction of a new technology with impacts such as the Internet, mobile phones and networks is a challenge. There is not yet an adult generation that has grown up with mobile phones since childhood. “The few technologies they taught me when I was in school I no longer use today. Am I bad at technology? Am I technically uneducated? No. What they are taught and what they will then apply have nothing to do with each other. On the other hand, there is a part of the values, the ethics and the knowledge of how you are that will stay with you throughout your life,” says Bombardó.
Is there evidence that cell phones pose a danger to young people? “Concerns about the impact of networks on mental health, the extent of cyberbullying, easy access to explicit content, uncontrolled chats and cases of adult abuse are supported by research, real-life incidents and legal action,” it says. Leen d’Haenens, professor at the University of Leuven (Belgium). The concern of parents of teenagers is understandable. How are they supposed to purchase a device for their children that has serious potential risks? It’s a very new technology that didn’t exist when you were kids? Isn’t it better to delay this time bomb? But it is not clear that it is so. Some studies that focus on the consequences of cell phone use among young people find more risks than benefits in simply delaying the age of device adoption. “When I see these things, I ask myself why I have been doing research here for 15 years,” says Gemma Martínez, a researcher with the European group EUKids Online at the University of the Basque Country.
“I’m worried about where this panic is coming from,” adds Martínez, who also noted that this wave is focused on risks and not opportunities. He fears that this will cause even more harm to Spanish children: “The level of digital skills of Spanish minors leaves much to be desired compared to the rest of European children.” You cannot convince your neighbor with the discourse of fear not to let his child Giving someone a cell phone is very dangerous. “It’s a step backwards, it makes me discouraged,” he adds.
Martínez’s speech, full of nuance and complexity, hardly matches the clarity of someone calling for a ban on cell phones up to the age of 16. Martínez, for example, advocates the introduction of shared devices in classrooms (but not personal devices), freeing parents from a responsibility that does not lie solely with them, and insists that critical digital literacy is fundamental from an early age and that the Hiding the device is not a solution. But limiting it may be an easier solution.
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