In the war for the digital narrative, the tug-of-war between the Spanish government and the PP has moved to the vertical format. The two main Spanish politicians opened accounts on TikTok almost simultaneously, although the impact they have is quite different. Alberto Núñez Feijóo was the first to land there in September 2025, just two days before the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, did. It is the socialist leader, however, who has gotten the most out of it: Sánchez already has 764,400 followers and over nine million likes. The most striking data from the comparison is that the total number of followers of the popular leader is approximately equivalent to the volume of new users that the Spanish prime minister gains in just one week. A gap that becomes even more evident in the impact of the content: Sánchez's last ten videos have an average of 1.1 million views, thirty-six times more than Feijóo's 31,200.

What should the relationship between parents and their children be like when the latter begin to delve into the world of social media? How do the algorithms work? What security measures should families and children take? Or what red lines cannot be crossed to guarantee good management? A window in your pocket (Editorial Mediterrània) is a family story, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, that answers all these questions. The story stems from three years of research by communication PhDs Mireia Montaña Blasco, from the UOC, and Mònika Jiménez-Morales, from the UPF, on how young people use social media. More than 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18 participated in the research, explaining how they use platforms like TikTok and what the consequences are.

Actor Barry Keoghan, known for films like Saltburn or the more recent Peaky Blinders: The King, has denounced the harassment he has suffered on social media, which has focused mainly on criticizing his physical appearance. In an interview with the American magazine Entertainment Weekly, he detailed that this hate campaign has altered his life and his way of behaving."It has made me withdraw into myself, not want to go anywhere, not want to go out," he says.

"It distresses me greatly to lose friends. I enjoy deep conversations with my mother. I worry about not achieving what everyone expects of me. I need a hug. I need to be closer to my family. You grow old when you feel nostalgic. You grow old when you look at supermarket prices." These are just some of the reflections that can be heard in a sound installation at the exhibition. We are seventeen years old, a group portrait, which can be seen until May 17 at the CCCB. Its unique feature is that those who speak are 17-year-olds, and what they reveal is very intimate: their thoughts, their concerns, and their worries, free from the pressure of social media or the prejudices of the adult gaze.

For years, sociologist Elisa García-Mingo has immersed herself in the study of the machosphere, online communities that spread misogynistic content, whether through ridiculing comments and messages or by asking artificial intelligence to reinvent photographs of women to undress them.

Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the internet, has complained about the massive use of addictive algorithms on social media: he would ban social networks and phones for anyone under 16.

I read in the NOW The conclusions of the latest Youth and Gender Barometer. It asks about partner control, and here, of course, the device called mobilewhich is the center of modern relationships. We meet because we start following each other on Instagram and break up via WhatsApp. If we look at the figures, 32% of young women say their partner has gotten angry because they didn't immediately answer messages or calls, compared to 17.5% of young men. It makes me laugh that it's emphasized that it's young women. Older women can go six months without replying, and their partner won't even notice. But here's the thing: 27% of women say they've checked their partner's phone, compared to 17% of men. 26.6% of women have told their partner who they can and can't talk to, compared to 17% of men.

It was what I expected to hear. The German teacher at the Official Language School asked us to give our opinions on Sánchez's proposal to restrict internet access for those under sixteen. The debates proposed in language classes are always equally boring: climate change, artificial intelligence, new technologies... I exhale. Then someone said it was outrageous that children grow up with direct access to pornography, recording themselves performing lewd dances on TikTok, glued to the screen and... bullying Telematics. And another replied that in his day ("in my day!") all this was already happening in other ways. It was what he expected to hear, yes, but expressed in the German we know how to speak in that classroom.

Do I agree with not giving mobile phones to children until they are 16? Generally speaking, yes, although biological age isn't necessarily the most important factor in assessing the negative impact of using these devices. Furthermore, social media has many other entry points. The policy of providing computers to all students makes access to inappropriate content widespread. And, above all, addictive practices extend to other screens available at home, such as tablets.

Young people today lack private and shared spaces where they can interact freely and independently without adult intervention. There is the space dedicated to formal education and extracurricular activities, but outside this broad range of organized time, what is left for them? In the physical, analog world, only consumption: streets full of shops and shopping malls. The available parks are designed for toddlers. In a few squares, there are still some ping-pong tables. In any case, there comes a time when children disappear from the city. If we look at the types of people we find on the street, outside of school hours, we see older people or very young children, but it would seem that teenagers don't exist. Where are they? Locked away at home, of course, and, in many cases, in their bedrooms, where all the social life they once had in person, as a real, physical being and not a digital avatar, has been displaced. The virtualization of childhood and adolescence is an unprecedented phenomenon whose long-term consequences are unknown. Currently, the data on mental health problems in this age group are so alarming that they should prompt us to reconsider this social shift, which we have neither decided upon nor thoroughly evaluated. Those of us who had children at the turn of the millennium were later told that we couldn't do anything, that we couldn't oppose the digitization and virtualization of our own offspring. To be against it is to be old-fashioned, technophobic, and practically an internet-bound Amish.

In the summer of 2023, I published the article "Screens: for all ages and without limits?", in which I posed an uncomfortable but essential question: how is it possible that we have normalized unlimited access to screens, especially during childhood and adolescence, without a deep collective debate about the consequences?

We've all been there: a loved one tells us they're going through a difficult time, and we feel compelled to react. Let's take a sadly common example: a friend tells us that they or a family member is seriously ill. Many, many of us, despite being genuinely affected by the news, simply write a WhatsAppHowever often we hear the phrase, once it's written down, it becomes a cliché: "I'm so sorry," "Cheer up!", "If you need anything, you know where to find me," "Everything will be alright."

The chaos at Renfe and Adif affects commuter rail, medium-distance trains, and increasingly, high-speed rail. This is the result of a political decision enthusiastically embraced by both the PP and the PSOE: everything on the AVE high-speed rail, and that all AVE services be for travel to and from Madrid. Thirty-four years after the first line, Madrid-Seville, they still haven't managed to connect Barcelona and Valencia.

An old adage advises joining the enemy if you cannot beat them. In terms of compolIf the enemy's values ​​are better than yours, get closer. And if your own values ​​bother you, apply them to the enemy. Thus, the classical right has sidelined its key concepts—order, property, family, etc.—in order to appropriate the term freedomAlthough for two centuries this magic word has guided all revolutions against the old regime. First, it was appropriated by the liberals, in the name of laissez faire economic. And now they're doing it. libertarians, Trump's followers, who obviously have nothing to do with old libertarian anarchism, but with hatred of the state in the face of the market, erected as guarantor of the rights of individuals.

Last year, social media earned over $11 billion in the US alone from advertising targeted at minors. It's terrible, yes. But should that lead us to ban adolescence or the toxic businesses of toxic people? We cannot trivialize the fact of eradicating minors from the virtual public sphere, from the communication and information of our time. Should they be the ones affected by the measures we take?

The ban on apps for those under 16 puts the dangers of social media on a level similar to that of tobacco or alcohol. This is the most important effect of Pedro Sánchez's announcement: it represents a cultural shift. And, as in Australia and France, it was about time.

This week, Pedro Sánchez announced at an international summit in Dubai that he will prohibit "access to social media for minors under 16." The announcement has sparked reactions, so many that even Elon Musk, on X, has labeled Sánchez a true "totalitarian." Musk's reaction is significant because it means the underlying message has gotten through: tech platforms, we will not allow you to make more money at the expense of our children's health and well-being. For me, this is the first message that should be heard everywhere. The second clear message is that we have made a mistake by facilitating indiscriminate access to social media so early, and it is necessary to reverse a situation that has lasted far too long and has more harm than good. We need a cultural shift in our relationship with digital technology. The data on usage time (more than 5 hours a day) and its direct impact on children's development, the average age of first use (11 years old), and the amplification of behaviors such as... cyberbullying (25% in girls and adolescents) or access to inappropriate content (pornography and extreme violence from the age of 10) are urgently needed.

The announcement by Pedro Sánchez that the Spanish government It will prohibit access to social networks for minors under sixteen years of age. This has produced exactly what the Spanish president wanted: a heated public debate, with opposing opinions, surrounded by a great deal of controversy. After more than seven years of doing it every day, Sánchez has become a consummate master at focusing attention on himself and his government's actions, thus seizing—or at least contesting—the spotlight from his adversaries, who, in fact, prefer to portray themselves as bitter enemies.

Following accusations of "tyrant" and "traitor" from X owner Elon Musk against the Spanish government for wanting limiting the age of access to social networks for children under 16.Now, it was the owner of Telegram, the Russian Pavel Durov, who sent a mass message through this network in which he directly attacked the Spanish president. "Pedro Sánchez's government is pushing through dangerous new regulations that threaten your freedoms on the internet," he stated. In his opinion, these changes "could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the pretext of protection." For his part, Sánchez himself responded to the attack with a post on the social network X, paraphrasing Don Quixote:Let the techno-oligarchs bark, Sancho, it's a sign that we're riding.In a message sent shortly before 6 p.m. from his verified profile via a broadcast list reaching millions of users with devices configured in Spain, Durov asserted that the measures announced by Sánchez—including holding executives criminally responsible for serious offenses—are "a red flag for freedom of expression and privacy." "They are not safeguards, they are steps toward total control," he declared. "Harmful actions" could land platform executives "in jail." Durov's message concludes with the following appeal: "Stay vigilant, Spain. Demand transparency and fight for your rights." "Lies and illegitimate attacks"

Sources within the Spanish government have denounced Durov's "unrestricted" use of his social media platform to send "various lies and illegitimate attacks" against the government en masse to the Spanish people, and stressed that these events demonstrate "the urgent need to regulate social media." "We Spaniards cannot live in a world where foreign tech oligarchs can flood our phones with propaganda as much as they want simply because the government has announced measures to protect minors and enforce the law," they stated.

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It was only a matter of time before the Spanish government announced restrictions on social media. This was foreshadowed by the interest in examples like Australia and, soon, France. The first spark of the debate on age restrictions ignited in the summer of 2024, with the controversy surrounding the consumption of pornographic content at very young ages. At that time, the government announced the Beta Digital Wallet, a digital passport that includes age verification—commonly known as pallaporte–. The restriction is also mentioned in the draft bill for the protection of minors in digital environments, which is currently being processed.

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