Barcelona promotes the critical and healthy use of screens in children and adolescents

The digital era opens the door to countless opportunities to improve society's well-being, but it also entails risks that begin in early childhood. To address this reality, the Barcelona City Council has launched an action plan with more than fifty measures, with the aim of promoting healthy and critical use of screens in children and adolescents.

The measures, promoted by the municipal government based on consensus with involved agents, are focused on guaranteeing the well-being of minors and young people in their relationship with new digital technologies, and address it from multiple angles distributed in three lines of action: preventing premature access to these devices; excessive use and addictions, and access to inappropriate content and cyberbullying. This was detailed by City Council technician Anna Morancho, who participated in the coordination of the government measure: "The goal is to promote a critical and healthy use of these technologies, for which it is necessary to promote digital education and offer resources so that families, children and adolescents can decide what use they want to make of these technologies," she specified.

With the promotion of this measure, the city aspires to be a model in promoting the appropriate use of digital devices for its youngest citizens

The measures that the City Council will promote also include workshops on prevention and digital security, such as those given by the Guardia Urbana in schools on risks on social networks, and a citizen awareness campaign. This awareness and sensitization will also be carried out through other channels: pediatric check-ups will incorporate the prevention and detection of problems linked to screens, with the aim of ensuring that information on this issue reaches all families: "We cannot turn screens into another measure of inequality."

And, as Morancho highlights, the measure does not intend to "blame anyone" for the use their children make of screens, but rather "to offer tools and alternatives from spaces such as educational centers and family spaces." Regarding these alternatives, the measure proposes to promote healthy leisure programs that reduce screen time, through municipal initiatives such as the after-school programs Tardes educatives and the reading sessions Nascuts per llegir. "If we ask families for a healthier and more critical relationship with screens, we have to provide them with tools so they can do it," adds Morancho.

With mobile phone without limitations at 10 years old

The City Council has promoted the plan due to the significant increase registered in recent years in the use of screens by its child, adolescent, and young users. Inadequate use of technology can cause cognitive alterations and health problems linked to eating habits and mental health, as well as addictions. Children between 10 and 11 years old in the city illustrate the situation: with data from 2021, 47% of them have their own mobile phone with an Internet connection. Of these, 42% use it without any time limitations, and 75% admit that they find it difficult to stop using it. Young people between 13 and 19 years old use screens during the week and outside school hours for four hours, in the case of girls, and 3.3, in the case of boys. The figures rise to 5.4 and 4.5 hours, respectively, during the weekend.

In addition, three out of four adolescents claim to have no time limit for mobile phone use, and seven out of ten usually have dinner in front of a screen. Always with data from 2021, girls show a greater problematic use of the Internet, which occurs in 45% of cases, compared to 33% of boys, and one in four girls claims to have suffered abuse in the digital sphere. For their part, boys are more affected by online gaming, in 5.9% of cases, compared to 1% in girls.

The key role of the Mental Health Board

The City Council has not designed this plan alone, but has supported it in a participatory process in which the Barcelona Mental Health Board has played a key role. Launched in 2016 with 40 representatives from administrations and entities, this space promoted a digital well-being promoter group in May. As explained by the head of the City Council's Mental Health Department, Lídia Ametller, a year ago they began to work on the issue jointly, "to have a plan with specific measures to address the harm" that screens can generate if not used in a healthy way.

In promoting this measure, the agents involved in the process were clear that "it had to be a very choral and plural tool: it was not a matter only of mental health, or only of education, or of childhood, or adolescence, but encompassed all these areas," Morancho points out. Faced with this multifaceted issue, a participatory process was promoted in which nearly 60 people from both entities and the municipal sphere and other administrations participated, who led various diagnostic and proposal sessions from which the measure has drawn.

The inappropriate use of technology and screens can cause cognitive alterations and health problems linked to eating habits and mental health, as well as addictions