Esther Ginés, a teacher and mother of a 14-year-old boy from Tarragona, was watching the news on Twitter/X when she saw an article about parents who organized themselves in chats to delay the age of their children’s first mobile phone: “I was surprised and searched the Telegram platform; As a teacher I must be up to date with what is happening,” says Ginés. The group was called, in Catalan, Mobile-free adolescence. That day there were already 3,500 people, and he wrote: “As an initiative it is good to raise awareness, but the cell phone is not an enemy but an ally, the key is education.”
Ginés received responses, from those that sought genuine debate to those that exuded a certain aridity: “Honestly, if you are so clear about it, why do you join this group?”, they told him. Ginés wrote another message and left it: “I said it on purpose to see how they were breathing, I didn’t know if they were going to listen to reason or if they were stubborn,” he explains now. Ginés believes that fear is the key to this movement: “These parents are afraid. These are people who lack educational skills because they have encountered these digital natives and were not expecting it. They don’t know how to deal with this. Educating takes work,” he says.
Whether out of fear or for other reasons, there are tens of thousands of Spanish parents worried about when they should give their children a cell phone. The central Telegram group has more than 9,300 members. It was created by Elisabet Garcia Permanyer, a body intelligence teacher from Poblenou, after a WhatsApp chat in the neighborhood reached its limit. An article in EL PAÍS about the initiative caused an explosion that Garcia Permanyer still cannot explain: “it is crazy, brutal, in just one week,” she says.
The magnitude is already unfathomable. There are more than 70 WhatsApp and Telegram groups organized by communities, cities, towns and neighborhoods. Mallorca, Navarra, Madrid or Andalusia have groups with thousands of members. There is a group from all over Spain that makes its announcements in the four official languages. There is even a WhatsApp group with representatives of groups from all over Spain and they will soon have a national meeting, so as not to disperse efforts.
“The EL PAÍS article appeared in the family chat at my youngest daughter’s school and I have a friend who lives right in Poblenou,” says Yamila Masoud, creator of the group in Aravaca-Pozuelo. “Then she told me that she was involved and I created it here. She has been brutal. At first it’s a bit of chaos; I have asked for help from people who want to be in a more active role. “I didn’t even think this was going to happen,” she says.
The messages mix debates, complaints about the excess of messages, offers of help and questions about whether there is also a group like this in the town they are asking about. Chats have become WhatsApp communities to accommodate more people and internal Telegram channels to separate debate from resources and organization. The technological sophistication of some parents is remarkable. After a few days, the goal in these chats is to have physical meetings.
“We were going to start moving it and the tsunami from Poblenou,” says Rodrigo, creator of the Madrid group, which already has 2,000 members and prefers not to say his last name. “In Madrid the associative issue is weaker than in Barcelona. That’s why it exploded there. It doesn’t involve that much effort either, it means getting people to agree to do what they already want to do. If there are many of us it will be easier. “If we are the weird ones, no one will want to be,” he adds.
It’s a ‘French revolution’
“It’s like a French Revolution, a social revolt,” says Garcia Permanyer, who fears that with so many people the focus will be distorted. His main objective is to delay the age, not to prohibit anything: “Our idea is to try to stop normalizing the fact that a 12-year-old child has a cell phone,” he says. In 2022, according to INE data, 75% of 12-year-old boys and girls had a mobile phone; At 13 it rose to more than 94%. “People are starting to come out who oppose it, but they say something similar to what we say. We only say that it is important to delay the delivery of the mobile phone, we are not talking about prohibiting it,” adds Garcia Permanyer.
But it is natural that everything mixes. A mother and teacher has created a petition on Change(.)org for Congress to ban cell phones until the age of 16, which has almost 6,000 signatures. There is a celebrated clinical psychologist in these chats who calls for banning cell phones until the age of 16. Other so-called experts propose their courses and hope that their videos go viral. There are vehement opinions along with parents who are looking for reasonable solutions. The debate has also reached open networks. This week Elisabet Bolarín, human resources manager in Murcia, was arguing on LinkedIn with a trainer who had posted the EL PAÍS article. In the end she ended up blocked.
Bolarín also insists on fear as a bad advisor. Parents hear the real increase in cell phone risks, compare it to their adolescence and fear the worst. Bolarín knows that fear well because it happened to her: “We got divorced when my children were 5 and 6 years old,” he explains. Shortly after, they were given a cell phone. It was around 2012. “It didn’t seem right to me at all. He had an identical perspective to that of these gentlemen. When I gave them the cell phone I was terrified. That’s why I know it’s called fear,” she says. I was right to be afraid. Her son ended up “all day hooked on the play [una consola de videojuegos] and to mobile.”
Bolarín had to change his life from top to bottom to face the challenge: “We had to get very serious and we focused on educating him. It was difficult for us to get him to understand that the responsibility of studying is his and that he had to assume the consequences of his actions. From 11 to 16 we had a battle of ethics and values, especially with our way of living. I have learned by falling,” he explains. Bolarín says that, at first, her son “could” with her. “I’ve been through learning from arguments,” she explains. “I went from being very nervous to talking to him. It was a godsend to be next to him, to spend many more hours with him, that’s where education comes from. Success is being with them setting an example,” she continues.
His conclusion is that avoiding that battle with his son, who is now a university student, would not have been the best solution: “Now he is charming. Before he was hooked on everything. Fear leads nowhere, it leads you to confusion and blockage. What helps you is knowing what is happening and how you can act,” she says.
Most parents in the chats are at the beginning of that path, with children under 12 years old. The fears are clearly reasonable: “I have tried to explain to my 10-year-old son what porn is and he says ‘mommy, please, I don’t want to know,’” says Garcia Permanyer, the founder of the original group in Poblenou. “Now, when he asked me why I was against this, he told him that just as he doesn’t want to hear that there are pedophiles on networks and that there are porn videos, I couldn’t give him a tool like this. The fear of parents is that they become educated on the networks,” she says.
In this debate, the maturity of each boy and girl is the most complex key. Between 12 and 14, many children will end up wanting to know more about the world, being somewhat more aware of the risks: “Kids know more about sexuality than parents,” says teacher Esther Ginés. “You have to trust them more, they are not stupid. You have to treat it normally. It is more fear of the parents,” she adds.
A firewall before school
As the debate over the exact age at which a child should be given a mobile phone is irresolvable at a social level, organized parents want to buy time without pressure. Therefore, the first objective is to know how many parents prefer to delay that age. The method to achieve this is to carry out local surveys where parents say the school their children will go to and whether they will have a cell phone: “It will help so that when you choose a public school in your neighborhood you can know where it is,” says Garcia Permanyer. “On the one hand, whether or not cell phones have been banned from the administration and, on the other, the percentage of parents who send their children there who will not give a cell phone. For me it would be a point to know if my son will go to that institute or not, one more question to decide.”
Parents who commit will sign a contract that is now being drafted by a father from Poblenou. It is one of those documents that the group wants to then share with all parents in Spain and not duplicate efforts. They are also working to have a website soon. “We are full. It’s like another whole job. We are 45 fathers and mothers organized by groups: each one has a theme. Some talk to institutions, another writes the survey, another wants to set up a website to centralize it,” says Garcia Permanyer.
The mobile phone debate within schools deserves a separate chapter. For Ginés, who has taught ESO classes and now deals with cycles, the situation was beginning to be overcome: “8 years ago cell phones had just burst into the classrooms. So it was a mess. Who was afraid? We, the teachers. We didn’t know how to manage them. Afterwards we have held a multitude of meetings because the department has always opted to coexist and use them as a tool. As soon as the teachers have begun to dominate the situation and gain respect, they have controlled the situation and we have no conflicts in the classroom,” she explains.
It is clear that, as in families, the management of a classroom depends on how the teacher sees his group and his way of managing. Ginés’ strategy is tactical control: “In class I don’t say anything. They don’t see me obsessed with my cell phone. A few days ago, in the front row, someone started using his cell phone. They don’t usually do it, although sometimes it escapes them, like adults. The kids are smart and know who they are playing with. If you ride a chicken, it turns against you. A teenager is like a miura. You can’t face it head on, you have to be more skillful,” adds Ginés.
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