DigitalBurn.com

I’ll admit, I like my BlackBerry, as I’m sure many of you do.  I can send/receive E-Mail in real-time (good for the type of work that I do), listen to MP3’s on the go, and most importantly, make phone calls.  Minus the ‘BlackBerry thumb,’ I do my best to put the phone down.  Not the case in this story.

Two Spanish children, 12, and 13, were so dependent on their mobile phones that their lives were suffering as a result have been admitted to a mental health clinic.  According to their parents, after school results began to plummet, they realized that they had to intervene.  Furthermore, the children were lying to their family members to get money to pay the cell phone bills, and stopped being able to carry out normal activities.

The children had owned the phones for 18 months, but had slowly become irritable, withdrawn, and antisocial, thus contributing more to their poor school performance.  Dr Maite Utges, who runs the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, was quoted by the BBC as saying “They both showed disturbed behaviour and this exhibited itself in failure at school. They both had serious difficulties leading normal lives.”  Additionally, she said it was the first time she had ever admitted individuals for cellular phone abuse.

[Pocket-Lint]

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