News Investigation

Posar fre als mòbils: famílies de Barcelona s'organitzen per endarrerir-lo fins als 16 anys

Oct 2023 🇪🇸 betevé (Barcelona Televisió) Ages 12–16

This Catalan-language piece from Barcelona's public broadcaster betevé profiles the earliest days of the Poblenou WhatsApp group Elisabet García Permanyer started in autumn 2023, days after it passed 750 members. It describes families' shared worry that giving a smartphone to a 12-year-old entering secondary school has become an unquestioned default, and reports a parallel survey of nearly 700 families in Barcelona's Gràcia district exploring the same question. García Permanyer is quoted arguing that families should not simply assume a phone arrives with secondary school, and that coordinating enough households to delay together removes the social pressure on any one child to be the odd one out. The piece frames delayed smartphone access as a coordination problem among families, not an individual parenting failure — an early snapshot of a movement that would soon spread across Spain.

750+ members

The original Poblenou WhatsApp/Telegram group organized by García Permanyer had grown past 750 members within its first days.

~700 survey responses

A parallel family survey in Barcelona's Gràcia district drew close to 700 responses on the same phone-timing question.

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CITATION

betevé. "Posar fre als mòbils: famílies de Barcelona s'organitzen per endarrerir-lo fins als 16 anys." beteve.cat, October 2023.

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