The debate is not new. Nor is it acceptable for mothers, fathers, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists or teachers, to name a few, to discuss the use of technologies and their impact on young people. In fact, those who are older still remember traces of when, in the eighties, they addressed the influence of television on the behavior and development of children. The diamonds on the two public channels, warning of the contents, were a legacy of that debate.
Forty years later, screens and technologies are attractive, intuitive, portable and intelligent, they are everywhere and they condition every aspect of our lives. Communicate with friends, family and professionals. Check the status of our bank accounts, find a job, lose weight, flirt, inform ourselves, expose our lives, play online with unknown people from other parts of the world… And endless possibilities. Furthermore, they are subject to spying on cookies, which know our interests and follow our trail.
Education in the Canary Islands is digitized
Hence the debate has gained consistency. And that the impact of technologies is more than evident in socialization, the behavior of the population, especially young people, and their way of relating in society. Concern about this issue is increasing.
Especially after the plans of the Government of the Canary Islands, In the previous legislature, they included the digitalization of Early Childhood classrooms from the age of two, which has generated a dispute among parents who ask to be consulted on a matter that they believe is key for the development of children. The Spanish Association of Pediatrics, for example, advises against the use of screens, all of them, before the age of three.
“Our fight,” recalls Estíbaliz Díaz, mother and teacher, “began one or two years ago, when a pilot program began in our children’s center with a huge screen for children under three years old. We already knew that in Preschool there were going to be screens, but we trusted that the Ministry of Education and the educational centers would take the health recommendations into account. Sadly, this has not been the case.”
Such is the controversy that the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands has decided to submit a consultation to the School Council of the Canary Islands on whether or not to regulate the use of mobile phones. Autonomies such as Madrid, Castilla La Mancha and Galicia have already done so. The Islands could be the fourth. The Canarian head of this area, Poli Suárez, recently admitted that “the debate is on the table.” For now, the decision is in the hands of the center managements. But this social movement goes further. It’s not just banning screens on the playground.
“We are not anti-screens,” explains Díaz, “but more and more families are asking for more control. Throughout the Canary Islands. We started in the South and we are already at the regional level, with hundreds of people,” he emphasizes while defending a “social pact to delay the use of mobile phones until the age of 16.” “Anything that is not a pact of these characteristics is patching the problem,” he warns.
The pact, specifically, is the document “Protecting children and adolescents in the digital environment”, promoted by the European Association for the Digital Transition and to which, among other organizations, Save the Children, Unicef and the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
One of the first to prohibit the use of smartphones in its facilities is in the south of Tenerife and is the IES Magallanes. Students leave their phones and smart watches in the lockers. This is an organizational approach in a center that, as its director, Natalia Guillén, recalls, “is overcrowded.” The prohibition facilitates control.
However, a group of mothers from the region, professionals who are also professionals in the development of youth and children, have organized to limit, or rationalize, students’ access to screens and technologies, considering, like many studies and specialists, which are harmful to healthy development. They see the centers’ decision as a first step, but their approach goes further.
Estíbaliz Diaz herself, Mónica Hernández, María del Carmen Cabrera and Marina Salomone, pedagogue, healthcare, one a specialist in Mental Health and the other in Pediatrics, as well as a psychiatrist, respectively, in addition to mothers, are acting as voices of a group that It is plural.
Marina Salomone is a child psychiatrist, mother and coordinator of the Child and Youth Mental Health Unit of Arona-Adeje (belonging to the Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria University Hospital).
Salomone is blunt. He emphasizes that the mobilization of the group began when they learned of the plans of the Department of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands to digitize the classrooms of the youngest children who, he assures, “did not adhere to the recommendations for proper use” of the new technologies. This is not a complaint against a specific center, but rather a trend throughout the Canary Islands. Other communities are in the same situation and, in addition, there are countries that have reversed the digitalization of classrooms.
Joy: “It is putting doors to the countryside”
It is not known exactly what Spain will do, although the Minister of Education and Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, celebrated in a statement on Friday the digitalization of classrooms begun in the last legislature, while adding that prohibiting the use of mobile phones by teenagers is “like putting doors in the countryside.”
However, Marina Salomone believes that “it is not enough” to ban mobile phones in educational centers: “Their use in the classroom has not shown benefits on learning, quite the opposite. The early introduction of screens in classrooms does not have scientific evidence to support it. In the centers, I consider it essential that both the educational team, the students and the families have the necessary information, starting with knowing the health recommendations. It is not about prohibiting for the sake of prohibiting, she highlights, but about adhering to public health recommendations,” she warns.
“A developing brain is more vulnerable. In children of two or three years old, no screens. Early exposure negatively interferes with neurodevelopment, causing delays in language, cognitive, motor and socio-emotional acquisition, even manifesting as warning signs of autism spectrum disorders (ASD).”
“During the school stage we can find preschool and primary school children with attention and concentration difficulties; of learning (often literacy), the ability to self-regulate emotionally and behaviorally, as well as others, such as irritability, sleep and visual problems, and overweight and obesity, among others,” says Marina Salomone.
This psychiatrist believes that delaying exposure to screens and technologies would not represent a loss in terms of the acquisition of key skills. “The fundamental thing is to provide adolescents with the necessary information so that their use is appropriate and avoids a deterioration in their physical and mental health, in addition to the risk posed by their exposure to cyberbullying, sexting, identity theft, access to pornography. and other inappropriate content,” he emphasizes.
Looping use of mobile phones
“The screen time of children and adolescents has been reversed. We find cases in which they leave their educational centers, where they work with screens, in one way or another, they eat, generally with the television and the cell phone, and they lock themselves in their room with the cell phone and online multiplayer video games until the dinner time.
Exceptionally, they go out to dinner as a family and go to bed with their cell phone or continue playing. They have abandoned sports or outdoor leisure activities. They have a hard time sitting down and focusing to do homework or study for an exam. Reading a book for pleasure has become an entelechy and mothers and fathers complain that they have lost authority and that they are not able to limit the hours of use.”
Mónica Hernández is a mother and nurse in the area of Mental Health, with experience in children and adults at the Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria University Hospital.
Hernández considers that the step taken by some educational centers to prohibit the use of mobile phones in their facilities is “excellent news and, perhaps, the first step to be aware of what is happening. This measure will not only improve functioning, but also social relations and will allow for more direct dialogue.”
“There are numerous disorders related to the inappropriate or abusive use of new technologies,” he warns. Among them, “delays in language acquisition, executive dysfunction and attention deficit, impairment of working memory, the ability to plan and solve problems, decreased emotional self-regulation, sleep disorders, demotivation or low school performance”, in addition to “social isolation, childhood obesity, headaches and visual problems”.
“Exposing an immature brain to overstimulation for which it is not prepared has consequences on development,” he emphasizes, recalling that “just in July, pediatricians warned of an increase in children with delays in language acquisition, relating this fact to , directly, to excessive exposure to technologies.”
Regarding the use of screens and new technologies in educational centers, it is categorical: “Scientific evidence firmly states that the use of digital methods (…) has a negative impact on child development, with zero to three years being a very important in psychomotor and language development.”
For her part, María del Carmen Cabrera, a Primary Care nurse specializing in Pediatrics, explains how in the waiting room you see “girls and boys with their cell phones while they wait and, if they take it away, they have a problem.” “Many parents give a phone to their children without parental control or without a prior discourse on its proper use.” However, she wonders: “However, who of us, as adults, makes good use of these devices?”
Cabrera considers that “sometimes cell phones cover the need that parents have to keep their children entertained, both for work reasons and for other matters. Also because the adult himself is hooked on social networks.”
In her specific case, “my daughter is going to move on to the first year of ESO and I don’t want all of her academic experiences to be with screens,” she says.
What do pediatricians say about all this? The Spanish Association of Pediatrics recently launched its proposal for a “Digital Family Plan”, in which it tries to involve mothers, fathers and children in regulating the use of technologies. However, the starting point is, in itself, a commitment to limiting these.
Pediatricians are clear on several points. One of them referred to children under three years of age. Considers, at least the national professional association, that “science has demonstrated the problems derived from excessive use of screens, such as: reduction in hours of sleep, increase and tendency towards obesity, and socio-emotional difficulties and of language”, while warning that “scientific studies in children under 2 years of age are insufficient and we do not know if they promote learning (…)”, although “the first 2 years of life are marked by rapid development” , which requires special care.
