Everyone has one. The argument is unbeatable. By the way and because it suddenly hurts all the instincts you have as a parent. By denying him that, you turn him into a lonely, unique, rare, disconnected and unprotected outcast.
A strange consensus has spread that 12 is the age at which children must (yes, "must") have a cell phone and today at that age "everyone has one." It is the transition from primary school to secondary school, but above all it is the age at which they mostly start moving on their own through the jungle. You know where it is, it lets you know if there's a problem.
A movement against this consensus has just been born in Barcelona. Associations of families in Gràcia and Poblenou want that vital moment to move from 12 to 16 years. They want to change 'everyone' to 'nobody'. May the rare be the one who has it. Give them back their childhood, adolescence, hand-to-hand. Delay the impact or negative impacts that smartphone abuse has on their brains and training.
Although the phenomenon is recent and we still lack time perspective, the scientific literature seems to agree that smartphones are harmful to developing brains.
The first smartphones appeared around 1994 (they were used for talking, but also for sending and receiving faxes and e-mails, they had an address book, calendar, agenda, calculator, clock and notepad, and some even maps , stock reports and news) but its popularization occurs from 2007, when Apple launches the first iPhone ("invention of the year" for Time magazine).
For this reason, and after an exponential explosion in the use of this technology and the entire related industry, at that time the "smart generation" appeared.
Those born around these dates are the teenagers who now preoccupy the scientific literature. Those who have grown up with a toy without instructions and whose side effects were unknown.
It is difficult to find a doctrine that defends its harmlessness.
An article published a few days ago in Science, signed by five experts from the Internet Institute in Oxford, underlines the disparity of results obtained in recent years in those analyzes that detect these harmful effects.
For this reason, they ask that the principle established in 2005 by the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, an advisory body of Unesco, prevail in any case: in the face of "a morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible, but uncertain" , actions must be taken "to avoid or reduce it".
They also point out the need to avoid generalizations and to act -surprise- "child by child".
Against this more skeptical view, one of the largest analyzes conducted since the birth of the smartphone, with data from 40,337 American children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 years, showed that frequent screen users were “significantly more likely to have have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression".
They also had less self-control, worse emotion regulation, inability to finish tasks, less curiosity, and more difficulties with friendship.
Many of these studies note the direct relationship between mental health disorders and the lack or poor quality of sleep, often a consequence of digital addiction. Just like the problems of overweight or obesity.
Last week, the ex-director of Facebook Frances Haugen, today turned into a scourge of the platform, said in an interview with El País: "In 10 years, we will ask ourselves why we did not regulate social networks earlier".
It may be too late for the smart generation. And it will have to be given a new name.
