In the midst of the debate on the regulation and/or prohibition of mobile phones in minors, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) has published data that certifies the unstoppable advance of smartphones among the youngest and how they skyrocket with the transition to secondary school: On average, 7 out of 10, 70.6% of children between 10 and 15 years old already have one. But at 11 years old, 45.7% already have one and at 12, 72.1%.
A data dive into the figures, which are part of the Survey on Equipment and Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Homes (2003), confirms that it is the transition from primary to secondary school that is the moment in which the percentage of boys and girls with mobile phones, something that has sparked a parental revolution of families asking for it to be regulated.
Thus, if at 10 years old 23.3% have a mobile phone, at 11 the figure doubles and goes to 45.7%. By the age of 12, 72.1% of boys and girls have a mobile phone. At 13 years old, 88.2% have a telephone and at 14 and 15 it is already 94.1 and 94.8% respectively.
The figures certify the concern, especially among families, about the early arrival of the smartphone in minors. In this sense, a movement of mothers and fathers is mobilizing to request the regulation and/or prohibition of mobile phones in children under 16 years of age. The institutes also urge regulation of the devices.
By area of ??Spain, most of the autonomous communities have experienced an increase in the population in the 10 to 15 age group that already has a mobile phone, a growth that has been accentuated by the pandemic because the number of minors with a mobile phone has increased. grew by 4.6% compared to 2019. The percentage has risen 7.5 points in the last decade (2003). Today more than 2,143,000 minors between 10 and 15 years old have a telephone. Of the total, 427,000 live in Andalusia, about 355,000 in Catalonia and 295,000 in Madrid.
Ceuta, Extremadura and La Rioja exceed the average and are two of the communities in which there is the highest percentage of minors with mobile phones: with 89.2, 85.9 and 82.5% respectively. At the other extreme, Navarra, Madrid or Castilla León are below the average with 64.3, 66.4 and 66.9% of the population under 15 years of age with a mobile phone. In Catalonia, 68.8% of children between 10 and 15 years old already have their own telephone.
The concern on the part of families and also teachers about the increasingly early arrival of mobile phones among minors has already reached the Congress of Deputies. Last week, Ángela Sánchez-Pérez from Toledo and Natalia Jiménez from Barcelona, ??both teachers – one in primary school and the other in secondary school – brought to the lower house the 63,000 signatures collected to request by law the prohibition of mobile phones for minors under 16.