There are probably few technological advances that have caused more family conflicts in recent decades than smartphones. The excessive use of these devices by adolescents and children generates fights in the home and, in many cases, mental health problems in young people. And it has very serious consequences, such as social isolation, addiction and an increasingly sedentary life.
And this is what professionals confirm. “We are seeing more irritable, hyperactive, anxious-depressive behaviors and lack of attention that is motivated by the use and abuse of screens,” explains psychologist Inés González. Not only because of the ‘withdrawal syndrome’ when access to them is restricted, but because “being exposed for hours, without limits and without parental control results in a lack of emotional stability.”
Furthermore, the content that is consumed does not always have parental supervision. “There are platforms in which the information is not regulated or moderated, and that can be very harmful at ages in which one does not know how to discern what is real and what is not, what has filters, what information is true, etc.,” he adds. Information that arrives at full speed, “and that saturates the person’s mental resources and makes the brain work worse when it comes to studying.”
Much more forceful is Nuria Geijo, support pedagogue, speech therapist and psychomotor therapist, who refers to technology as “the drug of the 21st century.” “In my time, horses were a drug that was frowned upon, but today this is accepted and normalized,” he adds. It is not about putting the horse and technology on the same level, which also has many positive aspects, but rather about drawing attention to the normalized access that many young people now have to devices that, used without control or limits, can be harmful to your mental health. “If the neocortex, which is the part of the brain that takes responsibility and control of our behaviors, does not develop, we will have irresponsible and immature adults,” he adds.
Geijo emphasizes that this social trend is the result of the use of technology by parents as “a babysitter” with whom they can leave their children to relax. And when use becomes abuse, there comes “impulsivity, lack of responsibility and maturity in all the higher executive functions”, which are not developed because “when we have to work on certain areas, we are playing with our cell phones.”
The solution? There is no choice, according to her, but to bet on social awareness, even if it is a slow process. And greater attention from parents towards their children. “Many times we are physically there, but we are not emotionally available,” he explains.
“A life too easy”
For his part, psychologist Pedro de la Torre believes that young people today have “a life that is too easy”, lacking norms. “I think they are overprotected, which makes them have much less resistance to frustration and less strength,” he says.
He usually deals with adolescents in his office, among whom he is detecting “many themes of violence that were not so frequent before.” Some problems have to do with “laxity in education”, although he also maintains that there are “many families that do it very well.” For him, the abuse of technology is just one more symptom of a society “that is becoming infantilized”, with a tendency to prolong adolescence beyond the age of 22. «The cell phone isolates them and makes them not need others; not like before, that if you didn’t leave the house and didn’t meet up with your friends, you would stay home all afternoon being bored out of your mind… and that forced you to socialize,” he concludes.
For her part, Lucía Cayetana Gutiérrez, psychologist at the speech therapy and psychopedagogy center ‘Anda Conmigo’, recognizes that throughout her career she has faced many family conflicts derived from the use of screens by minors. “For example, it is very common for children to have an episode of a series on their cell phone when they are eating, and that does not allow them to have good sensory integration, because they are on to something else,” he says. Not to mention the lack of communication when this happens. «The table is a place that should be pleasant, where you can talk, and if we are with technology…».
No more than one hour for children under five years of age
The abuse of technology by the younger population has become a major social problem. So much so that the World Health Organization (WHO) has already given some guidelines in this regard to avoid habits that could be harmful to children and adolescents. Thus, the organization considers that before the age of two, children should not use screens, while it ensures that from that age until the age of five, the time should not exceed one hour per day. From then on until the age of 17, the recommendation is not to exceed two hours a day. In its official statement, the WHO highlighted the importance of children recovering physical activities to the detriment of a very sedentary life.