As father of two teenagershe Pedro Sánchez announcement It touches me closely. It has also done so in recent months the conversation and the measures that They have already been activated in other countries. For all parents in a similar situation, and for all those who are going to experience it – if indeed those measures end up being activated—, the conclusion is clear.
For those under 16 years of age, the smartphone is two things at the same time. The first, a black hole that devours your attention and that also conditions that basic structure on which they build their own social identity. It is not just that the cell phone is a disturbing dopamine instrument in which they spend hours and hours: it is that it is there where they socialize.
In fact, in 2026, leaving a teenager without a cell phone not only prevents them from accessing the entire viral world: it means leaving them in a situation of social ostracism. You make him more or less a pariah. WhatsApp—at least, in Spain—is the main and primary communication channel for adolescents, even more than that of adults.
There they organize class work, meet to go out and manage their own group dynamics. If this measure is activated, couldn’t that significantly influence your ability to connect with your friends and acquaintances? Nowadays, relationships for them are already totally hybrid, and removing their access to social networks, no matter how well-intentioned the measure, can have a terrible impact for many of them.
Banning social media seems like a good idea until it doesn’t.
All this debate has brought back the buzz of dumb phones, dumbphones. They are those mobile phones with aesthetics from the 2000s that recover shell-type designs or even physical keyboards and small screensbut rather than being limited in form, they are limited in substance. The idea is to reduce this dependence on the smartphone and turn that device into something minimal to call, send SMS and little else with the idea of not being glued to the screen all day.
The idea is nostalgic, again well-intentioned and even romantic, but impractical. Those dumbphones They are postulated as a tool for digital detoxification, but this movement faces an overwhelming technological and social reality. In the short term the concept may be nice and praiseworthy. In the long term it is, above all, an obstacle.
And it is because the modern world has been designed by and for be lived with the smartphone at your side. Not using it means returning to a more uncomfortable and less practical life. On the one hand, that FOMO which can be beneficial (not everything we miss will be important, and probably most of it will not be), but on the other hand, there are real advantages in that total access to today’s world that the mobile phone gives us.
We actually don’t even need a stupid cell phone. There have long been ways to limit the use of applications and those dedicated to social networks—the settings of digital well-being from Android or iOS—as well as tone up our mobile so that its home screen does not encourage us to use the mobile, but precisely the opposite. Parents also have access to parental control solutions, and at home, for example, we use Family Link with some success, although recognizing that it is virtually impossible to control everything.
Trying to solve the current problem – which there is – with these types of measures is like putting doors on the countryside. It is a technical challenge that is almost impossible to solve and that follow in the wake of the famous pajaporte. Beyond the other gigantic debate that arises from this, that of privacy, here this control of minors seems unfeasible.
The solution is probably not in the device or the apps it runs, but in re-educating the kids. The mobile phone should be a functional tool, not an object of constant validation. Parents there all have a difficult role, and I always say that if I had had a cell phone at their age I would probably be as trapped by it as they are, or more so. Do we have a problem with young people, cell phones and social networks? Definitely. Is this measure the solution? It seems hard to believe. I, of course, have serious doubts that it is.
Image | Miguel Angel Perez
In Xataka | The life of those of us who change our mobile phone almost every week (for work)
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings