Two youngsters in Spain are being treated for mobile phone addiction in a mental hospital. The children, aged 12 and 13, are at a centre for mental health for children and youth in Lleida in Catalunya in the north of Spain.The director of the centre, said this was the first time that admissions had been made for mobile phone addiction. The youngsters? failures in school and an inability to carry out tasks normally expected of children of their age was down to mobile phone dependency and that this dependency had been created after less than a year of mobile phone usage.

Treatment is along the same lines as that of drug addicts with the cause of the addiction removed and kept away from the patients. Previously the children were spending five or six hours a day on their phones. Their behaviour resembled that of drug addicts as they lied to parents and other relatives and schemed to get money to top up their mobiles. It will take at least a year to overcome the addiction and recommends that parents don?t allow their children to have a mobile until they are 16.