The non-profit telecommunications and internet cooperative, Somos Conexión, has presented an innovative guide aimed at families, focusing on the use of technological devices by teenagers. The manual, titled “Phone-free Challenge for Families”, aims for households whose children already have a mobile phone to reconsider their relationship with screens. The proposal, which invites the whole family to abstain from using phones and screens for a certain period of time, aims to promote a environment of disconnection and collective reflection.
Inspired by the “No Phone Challenge”, a challenge promoted by the educator and digital health and education advocate, Telmo Lazkano, the guide is available in digital format and has been distributed to around 10,000 high schools. Mercè Botella, founder of Somos Conexión, explained that the manual arose in response to the growing demand from families who, after giving their children phones, felt the loss of a gradual introduction to their use. “The idea is for them to take steps back,” Botella emphasized.
In addition to the guide, the organization offers workshops designed to prepare families for the challenge. These workshops are conducted in collaboration with Cafè i Social Media, a program aimed at preventing screen misuse in childhood and adolescence, driven by the CIPAIS cooperative. To date, a hundred families have participated in these training sessions.
Both the guide and the workshops are part of the “Growing up in a world of screens” project, which seeks to reduce the negative impact that screens have on young people. This is the third manual of the project, following “Guide for cruel and evil families”, which deals with the delivery of the first mobile phone to children, and “Unscreen me”, which addresses technology exposure in children aged 0 to 3.
Concerns about teenagers’ dependence on screens have intensified in the field of public health. Recent data from UNICEF reveals that the use of mobile devices and the Internet is almost universal among Spanish teenagers from an early age. 98% of them have access to Wi-Fi at home and 94.8% have a mobile phone connected to the Internet. Almost half of young people exceed five hours online daily on weekends, and a third do so on weekdays. Additionally, seven out of ten teenagers sleep with their phone in their room, and one in five regularly connects after midnight.
A study by the ANAR Foundation has highlighted the involvement of technology in 77% of cases of gender violence among minors and in 62% of suicide attempts recorded from June 2023 to June 2024. It has also been detected that more than 60% of these young people have low academic performance, and 55% have not received psychological attention, highlighting associated risks such as cyberbullying and digital addiction.
Botella emphasized the importance of reflecting on how young people integrate technology into their daily lives, emphasizing that “it’s not just about control, but about accompanying and teaching by example.” The founder of Somos Conexión indicates that teenagers not only need rules, but also role models. In her opinion, the best way to promote healthy mobile phone use is to live that experience alongside them, promoting dialogue and setting an example. For this reason, this challenge is proposed as an agreement between equals, with the goal of strengthening communication and family ties in the digital age.
via: MiMub in Spanish
