EL PAÍS photographer Fernando Domingo-Aldama photographed Sole Domínguez and her family in their apartment in Getxo (Vizcaya). When he was done, the two children, ages seven and five, ran to see how the portraits on the camera screen had turned out. “No!” Sole screamed, but it was too late. The photographer was already showing them the pictures he had taken one by one.
The fight against the screens in the house of Sole, 44 years old and a lawyer at a bank, and her partner Íñigo has several reasons and concrete goals. Although her children (both boys) will be eight and six this year, they are still young and she is now pregnant with her third. The arrival of the mobile phone in her life seems far away, but Domínguez is already preparing for this moment with convincing arguments.
The scientific evidence so far is clear that there are no screenings before the age of two: “Evolutionary psychology demands at least a complete moratorium for the first two years of life, no exposure,” says Arminda Suárez, professor at the Institute for Didactics and Educational Research at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife). From then on, until the age of six or seven, prefers a small screen, always with age-appropriate content and under parental control.
Together with his family, Domínguez has decided to reduce this burden as much as possible with these basic criteria:
1. Parents must agree
Today there are screens everywhere. Domínguez’s premise for trying to repress them at home is that parents not only control them, they rarely use them: “Parents have to be aligned. Neither Íñigo nor I have ever been overly technological people,” he says. “I don’t have WhatsApp. I had it for a while and saw that it was a constant interruption. Íñigo has never had WhatsApp. He has Facebook because he uses it for work, but we’re not friends on Facebook,” he adds added.
The next goal is to lead by example: do not use screens in the presence of children. “When I’m with my kids, the phone is usually silent. If it’s an urgent call, I try to make it without them there. Maybe when we’re in the park, I’ll step aside. But I never look at the screen with my kids in front of me. When they see the cell phone, it doesn’t draw their attention because they don’t know what’s there. Íñigo doesn’t have a smartphone, he has a cell phone to call and text,” he explains.
2. But why all this
Aside from not being very technological, Domínguez has had little exposure to conventional television since leaving the family home. The screens did little to help. He also informed himself when his children were born: “When the first was born in 2014, I started to find out a little bit. I’ve found studies that say it’s better for kids not to see screens until they’re two years old. None of my kids saw anything on TV until they were two years old.”
Neither television nor anything: “The mobile zero. We don’t have a tablet. The computer, also zero,” he claims.
After the first two years, Domínguez clarified his motives somewhat: “I’m not anti-screen, I’m stupid anti-screen and above all I’m in favor of awakening the ability to concentrate. I like it when my kids are entertained with something, they focus on it. If I put a film on her and she wasn’t paying attention, I would take it off.”
Suárez, the teacher, puts Domínguez’s reasons in context: “From two to five or six years, some very moderate exposure is acceptable, always in the presence of parents. Tablets and cell phones from the scientific literature are tried to be avoided because they can disrupt and overstimulate cognitive development.”
3. What does a week without screens look like?
The theory is very good. The practice is missing. The family spends a lot of time planning moments with and without a screen. The children learn music, Chinese, Russian and French from Monday to Thursday. Even during the week “they play, read, go to the park, draw, meet friends,” he lists.
The screens come at the weekend, always under strict control: “We see one film at the weekend, a lot of classics and adventure films: The Great Dictator, In Search of Fire, Some Like It Hot, Indiana Jones. There are films where we have to stop and explain some things to them.”
Some episodes of cartoons come out on public holidays, but always chosen by parents, without the participation of the little ones and on TV, without the endless offer of YouTube or Netflix: “On Saturday morning I have a cartoon in French on DVD and on Sunday I have two Bandolero episodes shown,” recalls Domínguez. “What I try to do is make sure they don’t see ads as much as possible. I say: this is where it begins and this is where it ends. I don’t post a YouTube video that comes out with a hundred thousand things,” he says.
4. The importance of reality
Another concern of Domínguez, besides concentration, is the false perception of reality that screens offer. “I want my kids to get in touch with reality, with the real image of things, to develop 3D vision and see the natural color of things,” he says. “The little cartoons on the phone have some colors, brightness, lights that later in reality, in nature, seem very boring,” he assures.
According to recent research, sensory overload has clear challenges: “Images and music can be overstimulating and cause developmental learning problems. They primarily interfere with the attention span by not completing activities. Because he is very stimulated, he has to switch quickly from one activity to the next and keep motivating him through games and activities,” describes Suárez.
5. What if it was a madman?
Her family’s attitude towards the screens has led Domínguez to explain herself to other families who have treated her like a maniac or anti-progress: “They told me that I was against progress. Was that progress?” he wonders. “I don’t feel weird. It’s a way of raising your kids that’s personal and private and that people don’t usually judge,” he says.
But deep down, their preferences make other families suspicious: “Yeah, they ask you a little bit, but why? For several reasons, I want my children to develop critical thinking in particular. An example. Yesterday my eldest son said to me, ‘Mom, they played us a song in class and one of my classmates said he didn’t like it because it didn’t have any likes’. I had to explain to him that you like things or not depending on a series of more subtle parameters, different from the numerical criterion, and above all that things are not likes or dislikes, but I like it for this or that. Add to.
6. Video games, also zero
Video games are logically included in the list of screens not recommended for Domínguez. “I find them the most exciting, addictive thing. Video games in general are made for that, if you want a troubled kid, leave them a console for three hours,” he says. “As he plays and destroys his enemies, he will be attacked. It’s unnecessary with the adrenaline and sensory overload, for my taste,” he emphasizes.
He clearly prefers the more traditional game: “I love that they play. They usually play wars and adventures with their soldiers and pirates. They have their Lego, their Playmobil, card games, board games. Children need time and attention. A kid won’t tell you daddy get out of here, I’d rather watch a movie than you play with me.”
7. Who controls the school?
Despite this family control at home, the eldest came home from school a few days ago and said that he had been playing Minecraft, a very famous video game. Dominguez wasn’t amused.
“There are no rules at school, but well, teachers used to smoke in class and I’ve had teachers who would hit. Society is progressing and I think at some point exposure time and content will also be regulated because you are at the expense of what the teacher or supervisor wants,” he says. “There is also a person who wears ICT [nuevas tecnologías] and tells you that it’s educational that Paw Patrol is educational. Everything can have an educational purpose. I’m not saying it isn’t, but [Rafael Sánchez] Ferlosio already said that Disney caused more brain tumors in the minds of children than anything else,” he adds.
Although they are also introduced to computer resources at school: “The oldest learns Word, Google and searches for things that interest him. It will not be digitally illiterate,” he assures.
8. When will the mobile age come?
Sole and Íñigo’s children are still small. But the age of the first mobile phone is approaching. The 12 years with the transition to institute is the usual age in Spain. For Professor Arminda Suárez, the challenge of mobile phones lies less in the device itself than in social networks: “Young people create their personality, their self-esteem. If all this happens in a negative way in the presence of networks, this perception will also be negative.” In his opinion, it is okay to delay access to networks: Better first “a utility cell phone (just to communicate with parents) without Internet connection,” he advises.
Dominguez will try to wait until he is 18 years old. “My wish would be that my children don’t have cell phones until they are 18 years old. Just like they can’t drink alcohol. A mobile phone is an addiction mechanism: to video games, to social networks that can trigger fear. It seems to me that it’s too powerful a device for minors to have something so complex where they have access to all kinds of content,” he argues.
“Why does a child need a smartphone? Because if you told me to call and text your friends, that’s not true. They want it to reveal their image, their privacy, to navigate the networks. This creates a lot of problems that you don’t want to see. You take a 16-year-old boy’s cell phone and he reacts like a junkie when you take his drugs away,” he says.
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