Experiment: This happened with 10 teenagers who didn’t use their cell phones for 5 days

THE mobile phones They have become an extension of our body. They sleep next to us, they wake us up and they accompany us wherever we go. They guide us with their GPS, save our memories in photos, play music and have even started replacing bank cards.

And although they constitute a fundamental tool for life and work, There is a fine line that separates us from addiction and addiction . In particular, social networks and their algorithms – designed to trap us as long as possible in front of a screen – have obsessed millions of people around the world.

In this sense, it is true that Those who were born in a digital environment – ​​and who are now adolescents – are completely immersed in this invisible world, behind the screens.

That is why there BBC conducted an experiment with 10 young people to see how their behavior changes without a cell phone in their daily lives. The group of students put aside their smartphones and acquired a basic Nokia mobile phone, used only for making and receiving calls and text messages (SMS).

This is what happened to the young people after a “technological detox” which lasted five days.

Ruby, one of the participants, is 15 years old and admitted that He spends too much time watching TikTok and even ignores his parents by swiping the screen again and again to continue consuming content on this Chinese platform.

For this reason, living five full days without her smartphone was a big challenge for her. But Within a few days, she felt she “opened up the conversation more” with her parents, something her mother, Emma, ​​wholeheartedly agrees with.

“Ruby is very addicted to her phone, so this gives her a chance to see what things were like when I was a teenager,” her mother said. “He talks more and goes to bed earlier. “It’s a good change.”

Her parents took her on the tram she takes to Salford, England, to go to school. Instead of looking at what time the next train would arrive, the girl had to read the timetable on the stop sign, something she had never done before.

The same BBC report followed closely Charlie, 14, who after 27 hours without a phone, decided to abandon the experiment and desperately asked for his cell phone back. And feeling disconnected from what was happening on the Internet was a “really stressful” experience.

This, in the modern world, is known as FOMO either Fear of missing out (fear of being excluded), a term which refers to the feeling of missing out on what is happening on social networks and on the web in general.

But not all teenagers felt this way. Grace, another 15-year-old, said that breaking away from her cell phone made her feel free: “I feel like I’m learning things and becoming more involved. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.”

“As soon as I returned home, I started drawing and painting. “It helped me get back to doing the things I love.”

Once the five days of the experiment were over, the BBC researchers gathered the students and, As they went to retrieve the phones, several of them shouted with excitement at the thought of finding their cell phones.

As soon as they lit them, They stayed glued for several minutes, scanning the screen and catching up on what they had missed.

According to the study Digital children made by Kaspersky, 55% of minors in Chile have an account on social networks. Moreover, the Digital radiography of children and adolescents of VTR showed that 48% of Chilean children and adolescents are on the Internet more than 4 hours a day.