The arguably most addiction-prone demographic has proved, once again, that anything good can become an addictive behavior before you know it. Turns out, a clinic in Lleida, Spain is treating teenagers as young as 12- and 13-years old for “cellphone addiction.”
For the past three months, teens and tweens have been undergoing a rehabilitation program to ween them off the addictive draw of their mobile phones. After spending upwards of 6 hours a day talking, texting, and playing games, the youngsters’ handset-habits started to negatively affect their schoolwork and even led them to lie to relatives for more phone-card-money.
Child and Youth Mental Health Centre’s Dr Maite Utgès suggests that it may take up to a year to fully break these children of their drug – the cellphone.
The addiction, it seems, is real. This isn’t the first incidence of youngsters having to undergo a cellphone “detox,” and it most certainly won’t be the last. With the mobile space offering more and more in the way of hyper-connected, super-informed, and entertainment-saturated media, we’ll likely see more clinics like this one popping up in populations with heavy mobile penetration.
[Via: Telegraph UK]