Teens addicted to cellphones
2008-06-15 14:41
Madrid - Two students aged 12 and 13 are being treated for an addiction to cellphones at a psychiatric centre in northeastern Spain, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported on Saturday.
"They came for their addiction to 'Messenger' (the Internet messaging system) but we saw that they also had a mobile phone addiction," Maite Utges, the director of the Lleida's child and adolescent mental health centre, was quoted as saying in the online edition of El Mundo.
The two youths had owned cellphones for a-year-and-a-half and spent an average of five to six hours a day on them.
The parents of the two said their children used their phones with a total lack of control, which contributed to their failure in school studies, said Utges.
It is "not easy" to undo this habit and treatment for the two will take at least two years, Utges added.
The centre in Lleida is treating 20 children and teenagers for Internet addictions, according to El Mundo.
The average age at which a young person in Spain buys their first cellphone is between 12 and 14, though experts recommend they should not have one before 16 years of age, the newspaper reported.
The Spanish government anti-drug agency estimates 10% of adolescents in Madrid suffer from an addiction to their cellphone or to the internet, according to El Mundo.