These days the families of the boys and girls who next year make the leap to high school are busy visiting school options, something that the Adolescence Lliure de Mòbils movement, which calls for delaying the arrival of the smartphone until the age of 16, wants to take advantage of to continue disclosing. In a new initiative that has started these days, they inform the school and encourage families to ask at the presentation meeting what policy the center will follow regarding the use of mobile phones. More than 1,000 information brochures have been printed and distributed at the center or will be hand-delivered to families.
This Wednesday, coinciding with the first open day of a public institute in Poblenou, the information campaign started. This Barcelona neighborhood was the embryo of the revolt and from which arose the social movement that calls for delaying the arrival of the mobile phone and not necessarily handing it over with the passage of secondary school, citing reasons of mental health and to improve social relations.
Georgina Llongueras and several colleagues from the Adolescència Lliure de Mòbils have been at the doors of the Maria Espinalt, handing out information sheets and encouraging reflection so that families ask themselves “why do their children need a mobile phone in Secondary”, explains Llongueras. She has also gone as an interested party, since her son is in 6th grade and next year she makes the jump to high school. So after informing the families, she has entered the center to meet it and find out what it offers.
Like Georgina, the families of the students who are in 6th grade this year and also those in 5th grade are the target audience of the campaign that seeks to continue generating debate and reflection on the need for young people to have a smartphone when They land at the institute.
Furthermore, another of the tasks of Georgina and the rest of the volunteers has been to “encourage” parents to ask at the information meeting about the institute’s position regarding mobile phone policy, given that it is allowed to use the telephone for personal purposes. pedagogical. With this they want to force the centers to be clear about their position on the issue, since Educació’s positioning has left a gap and they believe that there should be a single regulation.
For Marina Fernández Andujar, a neuropsychologist at the Abat Oliva University and one of the spokespersons for the Adolescència Lliure de Mòbils movement, if there are reasons to use technology for this educational purpose, it should be the center itself that provides it, preventing or forcing children to have or have a telephone.
The regulations that the Department of Education detailed at the beginning of the month and that prohibits smartphones in primary school, but allows the use of the telephone for educational purposes in institutes, is not enough for this movement of parents. Fernández Andujar warns that “the big problem” with mental health and socialization is in Secondary School and that the regulation should also be the same for all centers.
At the beginning of the year and as a result of social unrest and the movement against delivering smart phones coinciding with the transition to secondary school, the Department of Education approved the instructions for use of these devices, which generally must be turned off at the entrance of the institute or they will have to be left in the agreed place. The guideline, however, allows the use of smartphones in “special circumstances” for pedagogical purposes. And this exception is one of the things that families against mobile phones in teenagers would like to eliminate.
In Poblenou alone, fifty information brochures have been printed, which is approximately the number of students who will make the jump to primary school next year and whose families may be settling or handing over a mobile with the educational change. The movement claims that its purpose is not to prohibit, but to “protect” the health of adolescents.
