News Investigation

La revuelta contra el móvil que empezó en un parque

Nov 2023 🇪🇸 ARA Ages 12–16

This ARA feature by Lara Bonilla traces the origin of Elisabet García Permanyer's smartphone-delay movement to a conversation among parents waiting at school pickup in Barcelona's Poblenou, where the question of buying a child's first phone for secondary school came up. García Permanyer describes starting a WhatsApp group with modest ambitions — hoping to persuade a handful of her son's friends' families to wait — that instead grew into a Catalonia-wide Telegram network of roughly 8,000 people within a single week. The piece describes the movement organizing itself into spokespeople and working groups covering surveys, family pledge letters, and requests to lawmakers, and cites a local survey in which 70% of responding parents said they did not want to give their child a smartphone before age 16. It presents the swift, largely organic growth as evidence of parental unease about a default few had previously questioned.

8,000 Telegram members in a week

The Catalonia-wide Telegram network grew to about 8,000 participants within a single week of forming.

70% of surveyed parents

A cited local survey found 70% of responding parents did not want to give their child a smartphone before age 16.

CITATION

Bonilla, Lara. "La revuelta contra el móvil que empezó en un parque." ARA, November 8, 2023.

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