In January 2025 we launched the #MobilePressure project at @IQSbarcelona. Our research focuses on determining the factors that make a family decide to give their children a smartphone at a premature age.
In July, the first article was published, which allows us to lay the foundations for our research.: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05557-6
What do we defend in our article?
The question of problematic smartphone use in children and adolescents already has a lot of scientific literature. However, when we ask ourselves the reasons that make a family give their son or daughter a smartphone, then we don’t have many answers.
Specifically, we have analyzed more than 1,500 articles on the subject and only found 8 that investigate the factors that lead a family to give their children a mobile phone.
This evidence, in itself, deserves a headline. Digital technology arrives, is introduced without question, and we begin to study its consequences without ever asking ourselves the reasons that have led to its arrival.
This makes us propose a new research category: “Early Smartphone Ownership”. What are its determinants? What do we find if we focus here?
The few current studies tell us about factors that we have grouped into four: fear of social exclusion, characteristics of the home, the desire of the parents to control the location of the child, and the child’s maturational perception.
Within the characteristics of the home, having separated parents or the existence or not of siblings seems more important than socioeconomic status, contrary to what we might believe.
The article allows us to lay the foundations for starting an investigation with our own data on these factors and many others that could have an impact, such as gender, but which in this phenomenon may not have as much weight as we might imagine. We need to verify this.
This is interdisciplinary research in which people from the most quantitative field participate, and others from more theoretical ones, and which should help provide us with tools for possible policies that seek to delay the age of mobile phone ownership in minors.
