How a pioneering movement of Basque families managed a ‘digital delay’ for their teenage kids

“When we started in 2019, 99% of 12-year-old kids going into their first year of secondary school had a cell phone; today 90% of those starting their second year don’t have one. We’ve turned it around,” says Miren Ros, an educator and promoter of a pioneering group in Spain that is working to delay the age of the first cell phone in adolescence. Those percentages represent “only 60-65 children, but it’s already an achievement,” she adds.

The success is only applicable to one of the four secondary schools in Zarautz, a city in Spain’s northern Basque region. “The figures for the other three schools are not as good because they started later,” says Ros. But there are other success stories in the Basque Country: in a school in Bergara, 93% of students do not have a cell phone in the first year of compulsory secondary education, and in another school in Usurbil the figure is 90%. “And in Ondarroa, 80% of 12-year-olds do not have a mobile phone,” says Telmo Lazkano, a teacher, trainer and another one of the pioneers of the movement in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa.

During the Covid pandemic, there were dozens of groups of Basque families concerned about growing screen use. Elsewhere in Spain, coordination came a little later. Less than a year ago, in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona, in the northeastern region of Catalonia, a WhatsApp group was organized to try to delay the ownership of mobile phones among teens. In just a matter of weeks, that small seed became a national group called Adolescencia Libre de Móviles (A Phone-Free Adolescence), which includes groups of families from all over Spain. “The groups that have been working on this issue for the longest time are now seeing the most results,” notes Lazkano.

The concern is not limited to Spain. This academic year, more and more countries are limiting or prohibiting the use of cell phones in schools. The Basque Country is the only region of Spain that leaves decisions about cell phone use in educational centers in the hands of the schools (several other regions have this year implemented laws banning the devices in their school systems, while a few began regulating their use as early as 2014).

There is also a bigger debate about the consequences of the uncontrolled use of cell phones and social media by teens, whether at school or at home. The goal of the movement in the Basque Country, which broadly coincides with those of other places, is to delay the age of the first smartphone purchase, to educate children and adults about the use of technology and to rationalize the digitalization of the educational system.

A bottom-to-top approach

In the Basque Country, and especially in Gipuzkoa province, activists continue with their original movement. “The geography of Gipuzkoa is made up of many small communities, it is not like Bizkaia, which is more centralized around Bilbao. Here the movement emerged more from the bottom up,” says Lazkano. “Vizcaya and Álava are going slower and operate like Adolescencia Libre de Móviles [the national movement]. But we are more of a ‘farm-to-table’ movement, we believe in working at the very local level,” says Ros.

The seed that was planted in Zarautz spread to another town, Tolosa. “The pandemic made the numbers and consequences of screen use explode, so more people became aware of it and it gained a lot of traction in Tolosa,” says Lazkano, who is also the creator of an experiment called The No-Phone Challenge, where he encourages teenagers to analyze their own reactions during a week without a mobile phone.

It was in Tolosa, in 2021, that they came up with a name for their movement. “We needed a catchy name,” explains Lierni Armendariz Lacunza, an educator and organizer of the group in Tolosa. “As life would have it, I left home late that day and was late to the meeting, and when I was dropping off my eldest son I said to him ‘Lift your head from your phone, man!’ After recounting this anecdote at the meeting, a colleague exclaimed: “That’s the name!” And so Altxa Burua (”Lift your head” in Basque) was born.

Local media have played a key role in spreading the word about these groups. Armendariz saw the Zarautz initiative on TV and called Miren Ros to ask her to deliver a training session in Tolosa. Their own initiative also appeared in the media, especially the following year, when they created a sticker for local shops encouraging teenagers who did not have a mobile phone to use the store’s phone to talk to their parents.

“This is a marathon”

This past Tuesday, Altxa Burua held one of its annual meetings in Bergara (Gipuzkoa) with dozens of representatives from 2,000 families. Despite the successes in raising awareness and delaying the age, not everything is quick or simple: “You have to keep going, this is a marathon,” says Ros.

One problem with this movement is that some parents are very worried about giving their kids their first cell phone, but only for a year or two. “Once they buy it, they often disappear from the groups,” says Ros, who notes that parents should still have some control over things, for instance by starting the kids out on a low-GB plan.

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