In Spain, parents are mobilizing to ban cell phones for children under 16

2023-12-12 04:00:04

LETTER FROM MADRID

In a schoolyard, in October 2016. GAELLE MARCEL / UNSPLASH

This is a standard, unwritten but ultra-generalized: when they enter the first year of secondary education, between 11 and 12 years old, Spanish children must have a smartphone. Until now, this social injunction was generally accepted with indifference or carelessness, sometimes with a certain fatalism, depending on the parents. It took the succession, since the start of the school year, of several news items linked to the use of social networks by children and the mobilization of groups of parents against early and often unlimited access to cell phones for the issue to transform into a great national debate. Something unprecedented in a country that has until now remained largely closed to all the debates launched elsewhere in Europe about the risks of screens on children.

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At the beginning of September, parents in the small town of Almendralejo, in Extremadura (center), discovered that false photos of their daughters, completely naked using artificial intelligence software, were circulating on social networks. The number of victims exceeded twenty and their age ranged between 12 and 14 years old. Twenty-six boys have since been the subject of a police investigation. Five, aged under 14, are not criminally responsible. The others risk sentences ranging from 2 to 9 years in prison for the production of pornographic content involving minors. Some photos were allegedly posted on adult sites.

At the end of September, it was this time the village of Astillero, in Cantabria (north), which discovered, horrified, that dozens of schoolchildren aged 14 had been included in a WhatsApp group where messages were circulating. pornographic and extreme content, including images of sexual assault on minors, scenes of zoophilia or videos of beheadings. Finally, in November, the management of a school in San Sebastián, in the Basque Country, decided to alert parents of the existence of a group broadcasting pornographic content, as well as racist, homophobic and Francoist content. . It had nearly a thousand members, mostly aged 13 to 15.

All the other children have one

It was not these news items that caused the birth of a movement against the generalization of cell phones for 12-year-olds, in the Poblenou district of Barcelona, ​​last September. But it is likely that without these cases, the appeal of these parents, concerned about the negative effects of overexposure to screens or inappropriate digital content, would not have gained the magnitude it currently knows. The Telegram group they created (Cellphone Free Teenage) has more than 10,000 members and local variations have been born in almost all regions of Spain.

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