Spanish Children Treated for Cellphone Addiction
Two Spanish students are being treated for an addiction to cellphones at a psychiatric centre in northeastern Spain, the El Mundo newspaper has reported. They are reported to have been given a mobile phone some 18 months ago and managed to spend an average of five to six hours per day using them.
"They came for their addiction to 'Messenger' (the Internet messaging system) but we saw that they also had a mobile phone addiction," Maite Utges, the director of the Lleida's child and adolescent mental health centre, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying in the online edition of the newspaper. The centre usually treats children and teenagers for internet addiction.
Their parents blamed the mobile phone usage for declining performance in school.
It is "not easy" to undo this habit and treatment for the two will take at least two years, Utges added. The government's anti-drug agency has estimates that some ten percent of Madrid adolescents suffer from some form of addiction to the internet or mobile phones.
On the web: El Mundo
Posted to the site on 16th June 2008
