Madrid: Two children are learning to live without their mobile phones after becoming so badly addicted to the technology they were admitted to a mental health clinic.
They were brought in after spending an average of six hours a day on their phones, talking, texting or playing games.
Their parents became concerned that the children, aged 12 and 13, were unable to carry out normal activities without their handsets. They were failing at school and deceiving relatives in an attempt to obtain more money for phone cards.
However, it may take a year to wean them off the "drug", said Dr Maite Utges, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, northeast Spain, where they have been treated for the past three months. "It is the first time we have used a specific treatment to cure a dependence on the mobile phone," she said.
"They both showed disturbed behaviour and this exhibited itself in failure at school. They both had serious difficulties leading normal lives."
Both children had had their own phones for 18 months and were not controlled by their parents.
"One paid for their phone by getting money from the grandmother and other family members, without explaining what they were going to do with it," said Dr Utges.
At least two cases of phone addiction have been reported in Britain where young people who were obsessed with their phones and became depressed when the number of incoming calls or messages dropped.
The average age at which a young person in Spain buys their first mobile phone is between 12 and 14, though experts recommend they should not have one before 16 years of age, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported yesterday.
The Spanish government anti-drug agency estimates 10 per cent of adolescents in Madrid suffer from an addiction to their mobile phone or to the internet, according to El Mundo.
