Children need psychiatric help to kick mobile phone habit

Jun 16 2008

A mental health institution in Spain is said to be treating two children for addiction to their mobile phones.

There has been increasing concern on the part of experts about the adverse effects mobile phone use may have on children and the children age 12 and 13 were admitted to a mental health clinic by their parents because they could not carry out normal activities without their phones.

The children were addicted to their phones and were lying to relatives in order to get money to spend on their phones - both exhibited disturbed behaviour and had serious difficulties leading normal lives and were also failing at school.

According to Dr. Maite Utges, who runs the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, near Barcelona in north-eastern Spain, it is the first time the clinic has treated children who were dependent on their mobile phones.

The children had owned their phones for 18 months and had unrestrained access to them before their parents realised how serious their dependence had become.

Both children spent an average of six hours a day on the phone, talking, texting or playing video games.

Experts on addiction say children who develop a dependency on mobile phones, like those who over-use video games, often become irritable, withdrawn and antisocial, and their school performance deteriorates; they suggest the cases may be just the tip of the iceberg and that mobile phone addiction could be a danger in the future.

Dr. Utges says parents should not allow their children to have mobile phones until they have reached 16 years of age and says the children have been learning to live without their phones for the past three months, but might need at least a year of treatment to get them off the "drug".

Concerns over mobile phone "dependency" have emerged in several countries including Britain and Japan, where parents have been warned to limit phone usage because of side effects in children who overuse them.

Experts say often it is a case of habitual behaviour rather than addiction and not having access results in short-term withdrawal symptoms.

A study carried out last year by the children's ombudsman in Madrid found that 30% of children between the ages of 11 and 17 felt "extremely oppressed" when their phone was taken away from them.