Mobile phone users are getting younger and younger these days, it’s not uncommon to see kids walking down the streets messaging their friends and watching videos or playing games on public transport.

But, recently there has been growing support among parents who want to ban smartphones for those under the age of 16 in order to protect them from the harmful effects of these devices on their children’s development and online safety.

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The move started in the Catalan capital of Barcelona when several parents in one neighbourhood created a WhatsApp group to complain about the fact that several 12-year-olds in their kids’ classes had mobile phones, arguing why they won’t let theirs have them before the age of 16.

Support for the movement has quickly spread, not only to other neighbourhoods in Barcelona, but all over the region, hundreds of concerned parents joined the group.

To keep up with demand, the debate moved to the online platform Telegram and a new initiative known as Adolescència lliure de móbils (Adolescents free from mobiles) was born, which now has 6,000-7,000 members. The group seeks to raise awareness of the negative effects of smartphones on children under 16.

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Similar groups have now been set up across Spain and the movement is growing. Parents are now trying to promote legislative actions so that educational ministries and the local governments adopt measures to “protect minors from addiction to screens, from the risks of social networks and the dangers of access to content” not appropriate for their age. These include banning mobile devices entirely in secondary education campuses.

The negative impact of mobile phones on children’s education has even been highlighted by UNESCO. The organisation’s latest education and technology report states that “the mere fact of being near a mobile device distracts students and has a negative effect on learning”.

It also warns that “the perception of teachers is that the use of tablets and phones makes classroom management difficult” because they slow down students’ attention during classes and encourage bullying.

David Cortejoso, a psychologist specialising in new technologies also explains: “We face all kinds of problems: psychological, emotional, behavioural and physical. The situation is getting out of hand for many parents, who see that their children abandon good habits, do not sleep, reduce their academic performance, give up sports, suffer from eating disorders and suffer explosive mood swings”. 

According to a study by Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), 85 percent of children between 12 and 14 years old already have a mobile phone.

Despite all the research on the effect phones have in the classroom, only two regions as a whole in Spain have so far banned them in schools – Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia, in 2014, and Madrid, in 2020.

Catalonia recently announced that in January 2024 it will send guidelines to educational centres to regulate the use of mobile phones in the region. They claim that 52.77 percent of education centres already have some type of rule regarding the use of them in place, but they want it to be consistent. 

Most regions leave the decision up to the schools themselves, arguing that the use of technology is part of the educational curriculum, which in recent years has focused on promoting the use of screens in classrooms.

Experts agree that there is a fine line between learning to use digital technology and the problems that mobile phones cause classrooms, which is currently at the centre of the debate.

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