The Rebellion Against the Smartphone: The Movement of Spanish Families for a Phone-Free Adolescence

The documentary opens with Mar, a teenager who, unlike most of her classmates, doesn't have a phone. Her mother, who is French-Spanish, has become especially combative about smartphones and has set strict rules at home. There are no screens in the bedrooms. Homework is done on a computer in the living room, with the screen in full view and the door open.

The restriction applies to the adults as well. The mother leaves her phone in a specific corner of the house, a kind of "phone parking spot." She goes there to check whether she has messages and replies later. She explains it as a way of using the phone responsibly and of being consistent with their daughter and with themselves, because they realized the phone had become too present. She says that when it's far away she feels the urge to look at it, and that keeping it out of reach helps her hold back.

The family has decided to wait until at least age 14 to give Mar a phone. The conversation reveals the cost of that decision: the frustration of being left out of what her friends share. The mother belongs to the association for a phone-free adolescence, which, according to the report, is expanding rapidly.

The movement was born in Poblenou, a quiet neighborhood by the sea. It was launched by Elisabet in September 2023. Looking back, she is surprised herself: she says so much has happened in a year that it feels as though much more time has passed, and she speaks of a sense of vertigo.

It all started in the park where her children and their friends play. She created a WhatsApp group called "Poblenou Phone-Free Adolescence." Her initial idea was modest: to talk with the parents of three or four of her children's friends so they would become aware of the issue and delay giving their kids phones together. The reasoning is collective: if families "stick together," the child doesn't feel alone and the social pressure eases. At first there were about ten parents in the group. To Elisabet's surprise, within a few weeks there were thousands across Barcelona.

Elisabet spreads the message on social media, but above all in the physical world, through her dance school. Disconnection is even the theme of her next show. The piece will begin with the analog: puppets and games. Midway through, a magic box will appear with a tablet full of lights, and from there come Wi-Fi, tablets, Android and robots. She insists that it isn't about rejecting technology. She wants balance, imagination and sports, and, on that foundation, some time with technology "used well" to look up information, because, she repeats, technology is very useful if used well. One of the girls remarks that she'll get her phone at 16, and that if it's later, she doesn't mind, because she can keep playing.

For Elisabet and her followers, the mobile phone has become a public health issue. The report states that children in Spain spend more than three hours a day in front of screens, and nearly five on weekends, and calls it a genuine addiction.

Dr. María Salmerón works at a clinic in Madrid with a pediatric service specializing in adolescence. There she sees Lucía, 24, who has come in for anxiety problems. Lucía describes her pattern: when she's "feeling low," she tends to spend hours on her phone to empty her head and not think about what's weighing on her. That's much easier for her than calling someone, meeting up or doing another activity that would do her more good. She recalls that at first the problem with social media was the constant comparison. As a girl with insecurities about her body and her identity, that affected her a lot.

Salmerón raises a question she is often asked: how can you be addicted to social media if it's a form of socializing? Nobody is addicted to having friends offline. Her answer is that social media has addictive patterns built in from the start: likes, comments, infinite scroll. When she asks Lucía whether, even while aware of the problem and trying to manage it differently, she considers herself addicted now, Lucía says yes, completely, even more than before. The narration adds that, according to some studies, screen addiction is comparable to cocaine addiction.

Salmerón supported the movement immediately. She says she was very moved. In some pediatric forums she had been considered "very extreme." Suddenly a movement of families emerged that, driven by concern about the effect of screens on their children, began mobilizing in a way that, according to her, no one had managed, "not even pediatrics."

Other medical professionals have joined. Marina Fernández, president of the association in Catalonia, explains that she joined as a mother, but that her healthcare profession weighed on her commitment. She shared with other colleagues the concern of seeing many symptoms worsen when screens were involved: in psychomotor development, in language, and in social and emotional skills. As she explains, the most vulnerable area is the front part of the brain, and every time there is interference, that area develops less. The narration states that studies are clear that the mobile phone is one of those interferences, at a critical stage when brain connections are being formed.

The documentary visits a laboratory where Dr. Diego Redolar uses an electrode cap to observe brain activity. First, a participant, Ana, reads a simple book. Redolar points out that language areas activate, along with the visual area and an inferotemporal region he considers very important for word retrieval and memory.

Then she is given a phone to scroll through Instagram. The narration cites a study according to which we scroll through more than 180 meters of images a day, one and a half times the length of a soccer field. Redolar describes what he observes as a "flatter, more homogeneous" activation of the brain, as if it were going into standby. He speaks of a dulled state in which attention is flattened and one constantly jumps from one quick piece of information to another, without retaining anything, without planning or reasoning. He qualifies this as a hypothesis: he and his team believe this could have a deeper impact on a brain that is still developing.

By way of contrast, they try a board game. Developing strategies and anticipating attacks creates connections, the narration says. According to Redolar, when playing, those skills transfer to other cognitive abilities and strengthen them, something that doesn't happen with the phone.

To get children playing in the real world again, the movement now wants to influence political decisions. Lluna coordinates the Girona chapter, in northern Catalonia, and lobbies the city council with concrete proposals. One of them is a set of stickers for shops: participating businesses would form a network of "friendly shops" that a child without a phone could go to and ask them to call their mother if they have a problem. They also propose talks, working groups and educational meetings to raise awareness of the current reality and of where things could end up if they continue at this pace.

The proposals must be voted on in the full city council. Lluna wants all the municipal groups to back them so that it isn't something belonging to a particular government, but to the citizens.

For the past year, Lluna has been traveling the country to meet with families and professionals, trying to coordinate the mobilization so it doesn't lose momentum. She explains her motives. She was abused as a child and is convinced that cyberbullying, and even sexual abuse, have increased exponentially with social media.

She also describes what her son went through. At eight years old he entered a virtual strip club inside a game, where a prostitute could dance for him and the player could kill her or take her away in the car. For her, that shatters a child's innocence. Her conclusion is that a mother can only protect her child as far as the walls of her home. The child goes to other children's homes and to school, and at school, she says, there are phones with data during recess and internet in the classrooms, so children see a lot of things. That's why the way to protect the group is to protect everyone: you can't protect the community through your own children alone.

Lluna is invited to speak at a school in a town south of Barcelona, alongside a well-known child psychologist. Among the audience are Mar's mother and her husband. Some families say that by taking away the smartphone they have "gotten their child back." But there are also parents who are overwhelmed or outright reluctant.

The exchange, only partially audible in the recording, captures several tensions. The speaker criticizes giving something "super harmful," like an hour on a tablet, as a reward, because a reward signals that it's something good. Some parents see things differently. One mother says her daughter's high school supposedly has no phones, yet her daughter has contacted them two or three times by phone. Another person argues that phones and screens are being "criminalized," and asks how to guide children in using them rather than banning them.

Lluna accepts that they won't convince everyone and says that isn't their aim. She describes her method as "drop by drop, person by person": there are people who have doubts and then come back saying they tried something at home, noticed a change in their children and now understand why. The goal, she insists, is simply for the information to reach more people.

According to the report, the mobilization has already gotten Spain moving. In December 2023, under pressure from families, the government banned phones in class and on the playground in primary and secondary schools.

At the high school the crew visits, students leave their phones at the entrance and collect them on the way out, at 2:35 p.m. One student approves: this way she makes sure it doesn't get stolen in class. When the documentary asks whether they could do without a phone, the answers vary. One says, laughing, that he couldn't. Another explains that he arranges soccer games over WhatsApp and that without a phone he wouldn't leave the house. Another thinks that without a phone it's a bit boring, but life goes on the same. When the idea of trying the experiment for a year comes up, Paul says yes.

Inside the school, the only screens now allowed are supervised by a teacher. One teacher explains that students used to try to check their phones in class, text each other and film the teachers, "things that shouldn't happen." The principal has noticed fewer incidents on the playground. Before, if a child fell, others would laugh at them and film it, which led to unpleasant situations. With phones, he says, bullying was easier.

For the movement, this isn't enough. At a pediatrics conference in Valencia, María Salmerón presents the Spanish Association of Pediatrics' new recommendations on screen use at home, which, according to her, had not yet been made public. The main points are:

• The "zero screens" age is raised to 6 years. Previously it was 2 or 3.
• Between ages 12 and 16, less than two hours a day, outside school time.
• Parental control measures should be installed.
• Priority should be given to phones without internet access.
• The age of the first smartphone should be delayed.

On this last point, Salmerón sums it up this way: the later, the better. If it's at 18, that's better than 16, and if it's at 23, that's better than 18. According to the report, these would be the strictest recommendations in the world, ahead of Quebec's.

For Salmerón, that isn't enough either. She argues that tech companies must be required to stop doing things they know directly affect health. To the objection that this means asking for ethics from companies driven by profit, she replies that pharmaceutical companies and tobacco were regulated too. That's why she believes it must be done at the legislative level and by governments, plural, because on the internet "either everyone is regulated or none of us are."

The battle can't be fought only at the local level, and the movement born in a Barcelona park is taking on an international dimension. Lluna organizes, for the first time, an online meeting with other European parents' associations. Participants include Caroline de Plaisance, who works in communications in France, and Simone Lanza, an Italian teacher.

They all agree that slowing digitalization runs counter to projects driven by Europe, which promote investment in technology. They propose stepping up action in schools and at the local level and, in parallel, giving a voice to representatives before the European Union. One participant suggests talking to the Scandinavian countries: according to her, they were the first to digitalize everything and are now backtracking because they've realized how harmful it was. The narration adds that governments are starting to react in various places and that France is expected to fully ban phones in primary school and collège starting in the 2025 school year.

Lluna travels to Madrid for a two-day international conference, with doctors, teachers and parents from all over Spain. For them, the change of course is still too slow, and the tech companies are always one step ahead.

The German neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer speaks. He criticizes the narrative that digital is the future and that even kindergarten must be digitalized. He argues that doing so means sacrificing children's future and health, and calls it irresponsible. The documentary notes that Spitzer looks at what is happening in Asia, where China manages to impose educational content and a digital curfew for minors. His speech is only heard in fragments.

At the same gathering, one of the participants declares herself certain that the first tech company to do something truly ethical "will see its stock go up."

The narration suggests that a generation may already have been lost, and that for very young parents the future is being decided now. The documentary closes with a voice from the movement that offers no firm timeline, but does offer a conviction: "it'll be five, it'll be six years," but this fight will end well because reason is on their side. According to that voice, it's only a matter of time before institutions, families, teachers and experts see it, because the data is there and can be consulted.