The Good Daughter, by director Júlia de Paz (Sant Cugat del Vallès, 1995), can now be seen in cinemas. It shows the consequences of vicarious violence and sexist violence on children, who are often unrecognized victims. And it does so through Carmela, a 12-year-old girl, who must periodically go to a meeting point to see her father, whom she idolizes. Little by little, however, the girl – and with her, the viewer – will discover who he really is and his way of exercising psychological violence.

Everyone is clear that reading is good and having the habit of reading is even better. For years we have been trying to do this from high schools, especially language teachers. I say we try because we don't always succeed. In a few high schools in Catalonia, half an hour is dedicated to reading every day. Where I work, this is done in all courses, from first year of ESO to second year of baccalaureate. Sometimes, on guard duty or walking through the corridors, you see that the youngest ones, those in the first cycle, still maintain the desire to read. The key word is "still", because I fear that with adolescence, a good part of the students lose the reading habit. Some, unfortunately, forever.

For young people, it is positive and necessary to have role models to follow, it helps them to build their identity, imagine different possibilities, find motivations, and know where to go. “The most important thing would be to have several role models, and for them to be human and imperfect, so they become a guide to look up to and not a pressure to imitate”, proposes Sylvie Pérez Lima, a registered psychologist and professor at the UOC. But what are young people's idols like in the digital age? From the 1960s to the 2000s, teenagers' bedrooms were transformed with posters of their youth idols hanging on the walls. “They were young people a bit older than them whom they looked up to, and they idealized their image and identity,” explains Carles Feixa, a professor of social anthropology at the UPF and coordinator of the Youth in Spain Report (INJUVE 2024). In the 1960s, teenagers appropriated their bedrooms for the first time and displayed their idols, especially musical ones, rock’n’roll and rock evolutions. In the 70s, they were revolutionary political idols –Mao Tse Tung, Che, or Fidel Castro–, who, with the crisis at the end of the 70s, ceased to have continuity. Then, consumer idols returned with more commercial music, not so much protest-oriented, and sports idols, especially in football and tennis, who were models of success. It is from the 2000s onwards that digitalization began and more artificial idols emerged, youtubers and influencers, who would go on to occupy an even more intimate space, social media. Lucía (15 years old) does have posters hanging in her room, a couple from one of the Spiderman movies and several of Sadie Sink (@sadiesink_), an actress from Stranger Things: “I follow her on social media and watch all the interviews she does, she's my crush”. What she watches most on TikTok and Instagram are reels of series, music, and especially humor, accounts that make her laugh –“many silly things, falls, and slips”–, Manu Rivas (@manurivasr) or Pablo Vera's (@pablovr11) dances, news channels, and people who explain things like Javi Hoyos's (@javihoyosmartinez) gossip.

Salt is known today as the municipality with the lowest per capita income in Catalonia. Also one of the towns with the highest concentration of migrant population: nearly 40% of residents are of foreign nationality. But what headlines have overlooked in recent years is that almost half of this town's surface is still orchards and pastures. The Monar canal, parallel to the Ter river, marks the border between the built-up Salt and the agricultural zone. Few facilities surpass it, except for a large institute built on fertile land. Located on the border with Girona, surrounded by greenery and with magnificent views of the Mare de Déu del Mont, lies Vallvera. A secondary and vocational training center with more than 1,200 students, inaugurated in 2008, which contrasts with its surroundings by being a large gray sheet metal center with a concrete-filled courtyard. "In winter it's a refrigerator and in summer an oven, there's no in-between!", laments the director, Ferran Maimir, who started this academic year with a direction very focused on working for the renaturalization of the courtyard, but with a different method: that the students themselves build the shade with their hands.

Sleeping well is essential, as sleep allows the body and mind to recover and function correctly. In the case of children, sleep takes on even greater importance because it is key to their knowledge and cognitive development. As explained at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital's Health School, babies and children need deep and restorative sleep to process what they have learned during the day, consolidate memory, and develop their motor and emotional skills. In adolescence, the hormonal changes typical of this stage can make it difficult for them to maintain adequate sleep schedules, which can have consequences on their mood and academic performance.

At three months old, Pau was rolling over, and by nine months he was already walking. As a baby, he was a chatterbox. We read together a lot, and this, in addition to reinforcing his literacy development, also strengthened our bond, his curiosity, and his imagination. He would run out of the house, his eyes always sparkling.

At Marta's house, with two girls, clothes haven't been a big expense. Throughout their childhood, they've made use of everything that friends' or cousins' daughters no longer needed. It's come to them through the seams, and that's why, even as little girls, both have been able to choose what they like and discard what they don't. They only bought the most basic items, like leggings, which are difficult to pass down. Both the older girl, 12, and the younger one, 8, have agreed on one thing for the past few years: they haven't worn skinny jeans because, apart from not finding them comfortable, they arrived just as wide-legged or flared trousers were back in style.

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.

My son has been creating instrumental music on the computer for a year now. It's a quantum leap compared to when I started. At 12, he's doing things I was doing when I was almost 30. The evolution is incredible. He's already listened to a lot of groundbreaking music. He pays close attention to detail, works quickly and intuitively, and focuses on choosing the right sounds to make the song sound interesting. He doesn't consider mixing as a separate element; he does it all at once. He sees it as a whole.

If my children hear me say this about primeThey make faces and walk away from me in shame.

France's battle to keep children and teenagers away from screens and social media has taken another step forward. The National Assembly passed a law at midnight prohibiting access to social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram for those under fifteen, and banning mobile phone use in schools. The law must now go to the Senate for final approval, but President Emmanuel Macron has requested expedited processing so that it can be definitively approved within a few weeks and take effect on September 1st. "Because our children's brains are not for sale. Not on American platforms, not on Chinese networks. Because their dreams cannot and should not be dictated by algorithms," Macron stated in a message to X.

"I felt very different from everyone else. I felt weak at school and developed anxiety and a lot of sadness," explains Mireia, now 23, who recalls managing anxiety and depression during adolescence. "I stayed in class, didn't go out to the playground, arrived late, and didn't feel like talking to my friends. Everything seemed normal, but internally I was unwell and I became isolated," she says about the anxiety attacks that appeared when she was fourteen and which she couldn't verbalize until she was sixteen. Although anxiety and depression are socially associated with adulthood, this reality also exists among children: it is estimated that between 10% and 20% of children and adolescents may have an anxiety disorder, according to the [unclear - possibly "warning" or "warning"]. Itersia Psychotherapy Center.

We should all get a little more sleep, especially during the week. What's not normal is seeing the faces of some students first thing in the morning. Not to mention those who simply oversleep or arrive late. Many get up alone at home and, in their rush, don't have breakfast and don't have time to get ready for lunch at recess.

Australia has just become the first country in the world to ban access to social media for those under 16. The diagnosis is clear: mainstream social networks have become toxic because they only seek profit at any cost, even at the expense of the physical, mental, and relational health of their users. What we reject is the business model, based on addiction and data exploitation. And therein lies the Australian mistake: instead of attacking this gravitational model that traps users, they have expelled the users themselves.

Ona Lloveras was born with Shwachman syndrome, a rare inherited disorder that causes the pancreas and bone marrow to malfunction. She was diagnosed at the Parc Taulí Hospital in Sabadell at the age of two. Until she was six, Ona was frequently hospitalized for neutropenia, anemia, bronchitis, and various infections. At age 12, her bone marrow began to fail, leading to severe myelodysplasia, a type of pre-leukemia. In April 2013, the family was informed that the only solution was a bone marrow transplant, as chemotherapy would not resolve the problem in her case. No compatible donor was found, and so, on May 27, 2013, they opted for an umbilical cord blood transplant. Afterward, Ona—who was 13 at the time—spent many months hospitalized and isolated at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, first due to the transplant itself and then because of intestinal and skin rejection and the numerous infections she faced. "After a lot of things I don't want to remember anymore, I was able to go home," she explains now. However, she clarifies: "Home care didn't prevent a lot of trips back and forth to the hospital and having to take a lot of medication."

"The quiet stage by definition." That's how some manuals and guides describe the stage of childhood between the ages of 6 and 12, which coincides with primary school. Although perhaps it's not as quiet as it seems. "It's a more blurred stage than the others. In fact, most studies and intervention programs focus on early childhood or adolescence, leaving this period in the background. But it's a crucial stage for cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development, and represents a window of opportunity for health promotion and the prevention of future problems." in emotional education, dermatology, and respectful parenting.

There's a generation living with their backs against the wall and their hearts racing. A generation that has grown up surrounded by screens and uncertainties, that looks to the future with a weary smile and a question on their lips: "How can we learn to live when everything seems too much?"

Preadolescence is a stage that, depending on each individual's developmental level, typically extends from 10 to 13 years of age. Therefore, at age 12, they are immersed in a period of change, especially on a psychological and sexual level. While we cannot yet consider young people of this age to be adolescents, we can still refer to them as such. older children That wouldn't be the most appropriate term because, as Núria Casanovas, a child and adolescent psychologist and vice president of the Social Intervention Psychology Section of the Official College of Psychologists of Catalonia, explains, they no longer have a child's brain: "they are in the midst of a transition."

In many cases, children reach adolescence with a sport under their belt. They started practicing it as children, in elementary school, and if it's a team sport, their commitment to competitions and their peers guarantee continuity during this period of change. But what about those who haven't played a team sport or regularly? If they haven't shown interest as children, it's hard for them to get hooked on a team sport at thirteen or fourteen. But this is neither impossible nor should it limit the highly recommended and necessary practice of sports. Miguel Ángel Méndez Pérez, a professor of health sciences at the UOC, is very clear about what families should keep in mind to achieve this goal.

When entering adolescence, everyone wants to feel accepted and included in the group and, above all, not be labeled as strange or different. Achieving this often involves imitating others, who are usually those with greater leadership skills and from whom behaviors that are "well-regarded and highly valued" are discarded. Therefore, they follow the behavior of the most popular. This is a common behavior in this "transitional" stage of life from childhood to adulthood. As explained by Laura Cerdán, a collaborating professor at thestudies in psychology and educational sciences from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), is a stage of change and evolution in the emotional, cognitive, and social realms, with "strong social pressure" that encourages imitation of peers. Although each adolescent experiences these changes in their own way and differently, there is consensus that these are years in which friendships gain significant importance, and young people therefore seek to identify with their peers.