The first mobile phone arrives at 11 years old and 78% of children already have one before starting high school

BarcelonaWhat is the impact of digital environments on children and adolescents? Everyone has an approximate idea of the effects that early or intensive exposure to electronic devices can have, but until now there was no study with such an important and representative scope as the one just published by Unicef Spain, in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Compostela, the General Council of Computer Engineering and the entity Red.es, and which was presented this Friday at Palau Macaya in Barcelona.From the report, titled Childhood, adolescence and digital well-being. An approach from health, coexistence and social responsibility it is clear that the presence of mobile devices is important. The first mobile phone arrives on average at 11.02 years old, which means that between 5th and 6th grade, almost 40% of children have a smartphone. A figure that doubles in three months and rises to 78.3% the summer before starting secondary school, as if it were a kind of transition ritual towards secondary education.

In the second year of ESO, 92% of young people already have a mobile phone. Before the age of 14, more than 86% of young people are registered on at least one social network and almost 60% are registered on three or more. For Nacho Guadix, head of Education and Digital Rights at Unicef Spain, and one of the study's authors, what the data show is the precocity and ubiquity of access, that technology is no longer a tool but a vital environment where they construct their identity. Furthermore, if the exposure to risks is so early, the damage can be significant, especially if adult accompaniment is limited. “Around 10% of children and young people have problematic or addictive use of digital platforms – phones, social networks or video games. This is thousands of people and it is a public health problem,” assures Antonio Rial Boubeta, scientific director of the study, professor and researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

There are very few differences between the responses of the almost 11,500 Catalan children and young people and those of the rest of the respondents. “This confirms that we are facing a global problem, no one is exempt. There are small differences of one or one and a half points above or below between Catalonia and the rest of the autonomous communities,” comments the director of the report. The objective of the report is to understand the lives of children and young people in digital environments – how they live, learn and interact within them – to provide evidence to protect their digital well-being, and to guide them responsibly into a connected world. Different areas of their digital lives have been analyzed: health; family and school coexistence and cyber-coexistence; relationship with technology; access to pornography and sex education; video games and betting, and the role of the family. Understanding the impact that technology has on them is key to being able to guide them with awareness, responsibility and a critical perspective, taking into account their rights. It will also help to orient public policies that guarantee a safe, balanced and conscious use of technology.

And from now on, what?

Teachers agree on the importance of leveraging all this information to provide adequate responses and answer society's concerns about minors' use of technology.The professor from the University of Santiago de Compostela proposes actions for the different agents involved. To families, he would ask for digital hygiene, that clear rules and limits be established at home to promote a balanced and healthy use of electronic devices. At the school level, he encourages educational centers to promote digital literacy, that education be provided in the use of technology and digital skills. Regarding the administration, digital protection would be necessary, that laws and strategies be developed to protect minors: “Institutions must be guarantors and protect minors in digital environments,” he points out. And to the industry, he demands digital ethics, that they be aware that business does not justify everything, “that they be responsible for aligning themselves with these values”.

Along the same lines, the head of Education and Digital Rights at Unicef Spain calls for community co-responsibility where everyone must do more and better: “So far there is a notable asymmetry between what families or the young people themselves can achieve in contrast to what the technology industry and regulatory frameworks can do.” He states that we need products that are safe for children from their design and, if necessary, there should be a sanctioning capacity that can dissuade the industry from using children and young people, and their data, as a product. Guadix points out that even if we had this framework, "we would have to develop the capacities of boys and girls both to protect themselves from digital violence and to make the most of these services so that they are agents of change and not simple consumers".A precise X-ray

The figures show the magnitude of the study, which has been carried out over two years, from the design of the questionnaires, which have been supervised by international referents from different professional fields; the participation of almost 100,000 children and young people; the data collection during the 2024-25 academic year; the processing of information; the analysis of the data, and the preparation of a state report, 17 autonomous reports, and 446 personalized reports for the participating educational centers. “It has been a collective and rigorous job, which would not have been possible without the support and impetus of Unicef,” assures Antonio Rial Boubeta, scientific director of the study. For Nacho Guadix, head of Education and Digital Rights at Unicef Spain, the report is one of the broadest approaches to this topic to date and the opportunity to have the opinion of almost 11,500 children in Catalonia, who add up to almost 100,000 at the state level, offering us a precise radiography of a topic of great social relevance: “Its value is that it allows us to move from intuition or alarmism to scientific evidence. We have a rigorous diagnosis that places digital well-being as a public health issue, and provides institutions with valid information to design effective preventive policies, far from both trivialization and irrational fear”. Rial adds that the information derived from the report is necessary to have a polyhedral and constructive view of the problem posed by early, frequent, intensive, and often unsupervised screen access: “It is essential to analyze the data, be aware of what the problems are, and from there start to act”.