SPAIN:TWO SPANISH children are being treated for addiction to mobile phones, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in the country.
The children, aged 12 and 13, were admitted to a mental health clinic by their parents because they could not carry out normal activities without their phones.
The children were failing at school and, behind their parents' backs, were deceiving relatives to try to get money to pay for the phone cards. Both spent an average of six hours a day on the phone, talking, texting or playing video games.
Dr Maite Utges, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, northeast Spain, where the children are being treated, said: "It is the first time we have used a specific treatment to cure a dependence on the mobile phone.
"When it reaches such a level of dependency it is not easy for children of this age to suddenly stop using the phone," she said.
The children have been learning to live without their phones for the past three months, but Dr Utges, a child psychiatrist, said they might need at least a year of treatment to get them off the "drug".
At least two cases have been reported in Britain of young people obsessed by their phones who became depressed when incoming calls or messages dropped off.
A study last year by the children's ombudsman in Madrid found that 30 per cent of children between the ages of 11 and 17 felt "extremely oppressed" when their phone was taken away from them.
Dr Utges said parents should not allow their children to have mobile phones until they were at least 16.