@mc5punk 24 February 2026

Short story: Between Screens and Hugs: How Young People Learn to Live with Their Phones

Marina sighed and put her phone on the table as if she were switching off a light to be able to think for a moment. Beside her, Hugo gathered some sheets from a notebook and glanced at his sister’s darkened screen. The living room smelled of detergent and open books; in the kitchen, an old radio let a thread of news play that neither of them really heard. “In a way, sometimes my parents complain that I spend hours on this,” Marina said. “They nag me, literally, but then you realize that, well, it’s for your own good.” Hugo smiled ironically and set his pen down. “Your mother always ends with ‘it’s for your own good’ after every sermon,” he replied. “As if that fixed the fact that it takes time away from studying or meeting people in person.” They were both 16 and lived in a neighborhood where the plazas smelled of freshly baked bread on Sundays and the schoolyards still gathered boys and girls after class. Their conversations, like many others’, swung between school demands, Saturday basketball practices and the inevitable presence of the phone: tool, pastime, companion and, sometimes, tyrant. At school the debate about phones never stopped. Recesses became mixed spaces where laughter, memes, song exchanges and arguments about what’s right or wrong online coexisted. There, amid tables and backpacks, viewpoints emerged that rarely matched adults’ concerns. More voices arrived at the cafeteria table: Lúa, an avid reader who had adopted a pseudonym for her accounts; Dani, who dreamed of programming apps; and Sofía, the friend with an easy smile who always returned to her phone despite promising otherwise. Each brought a different experience and, together, they made a truer portrait of what it means for them to live with a phone. “My mom says they’ll soon put restrictions on minors,” Sofía remarked. “She said on the news that there are policies like in Australia that limit the use of social networks until a certain age. It scares me a little, but I also understand why they say it.” “That doesn’t fix everything,” Dani intervened. “There are worse things out there: trolls, hoaxes, people who take advantage. It isn’t all fun. But banning isn’t the only solution. We need to learn to use it without turning it into a habit.” Lúa put her cup of tea on the table and spoke calmly, as one who lays out argument after argument. “When they label you an ‘addict,’ they blame you and that’s it. But many times the phone is the only way to be with others when we can’t see each other. If my cousin is in another city, a message makes me see her laugh and that’s worth something.” Marina, listening closely, felt the familiar mix of pride and shame: pride in the connections they formed, shame for the hours that sometimes slipped away. “Yeah, I might get hooked. Sometimes I realize I’ve spent hours without noticing and then the afternoon is gone. So I try to set limits, but it’s hard. It’s like the phone knows when you’re bored and takes advantage.” The conversation wasn’t isolated: outside, in the neighborhood square, a group of mothers waited for their children after school. There another front of the discussion opened: caregivers’ fatigue and attention, trying to look after others without a manual. Marta, Hugo’s mother, talked with Raquel, Marina’s mother, with the mix of weariness and care that everyday experience brings. “If we take the phone away they won’t learn to protect themselves,” Raquel said. “But we also can’t leave them alone with everything that’s out there. Sometimes I feel guilty for not controlling more.” “I spoke with the tutor,” Marta said. “They recommended talking to them without long lectures. Asking how they use it and what they see. Sometimes it’s enough to sit down and look at an app with them.” That tutor’s recommendation found its way into Ethics class as a practical exercise. The teacher, who had long tried to bridge rules and young people’s realities, proposed something simple: each student would tell a positive and a negative experience they’d had on social networks. It wasn’t a judgment; it was a shared map. “Positive: I found people who share my drawings and encourage me,” said Mario, 14. “Negative: there was a rumor spread about me and it affected me a lot.” “Positive: I learned about science on small channels,” added Lúa. “Negative: I stayed up all night watching videos and arrived to class sleepy.” The answers were candid, not meant to please anyone. Someone spoke of support received in a hard moment; someone else remembered a false news item that sowed fear; others described the satisfaction of self-directed learning. The result was a cloud of testimonies where usefulness and harm coexisted, sometimes in the same experience. Back home on a rainy afternoon when small curtains of water streaked the window, Marina talked to her father while folding clothes. The conversation began with a complaint and ended in an agreement. “We’re not going to take everything away from you,” he said with the patience of someone who’s seen many technological fads, “but we do want you not to be overwhelmed by it. What do you think about agreeing on some screen-free hours? Not as a punishment, but as time for other things.” Marina nodded. For the first time “it’s for your own good” sounded less like reproach and more like a proposal. Not because her parents knew everything, but because they were willing to join her in her relationship with technology. The decision didn’t solve everything immediately. Some nights habit betrayed her and she lost track of time again; on other occasions a false story alarmed her until friends and family helped verify it as a hoax. But there were also afternoons of walks without notifications, shared reading sessions and laughs that didn’t need likes. Those small, repeated gestures built a different practice. The friend group, aware of their limits and needs, made pacts that worked like experiments: check sources before forwarding, speak up if someone saw something frightening, take turns silencing notifications during study hours and dedicate one afternoon a week to meet without phones. They weren’t exhaustive or perfect rules; they were commitments that required negotiation and consistency. Weeks later in the neighborhood café the conversation returned to politics and news about limits for minors. Some feared top-down measures would ignore diverse realities; others saw regulation as a necessary tool to curb serious risks. Still, beyond politics, a common idea emerged: prohibition doesn’t replace education or conversation. “We don’t want them taken away from us, I want to learn. But I don’t want it to steal my life,” Lúa said at one of the last meetings before the school year ended. Hugo raised his hand and added with a smile, “Then let’s make the phone our ally and not our boss.” The phrase drew a shared laugh and, with it, an unspoken pact: technology would keep changing, public decisions could alter the landscape, but everyday life depended on social practices that parents, children and teachers could build together. There were concrete learnings: verify sources before sharing, speak up when something worries you, support those suffering harassment and learn to disconnect to be present with real people. There were also contradictions and relapses; some friends again lost hours; a hurtful message surfaced once more. But the overall trend moved toward greater shared responsibility, the creation of support networks in person and online. At the end of the year the group organized a small activity: a workshop where everyone shared a lesson learned. They spoke about limits, creativity, risks and opportunities. Parents attended as interested observers; some accepted their children’s advice about apps and filters; others learned to ask questions instead of delivering lectures. The story of Marina, Hugo, Lúa, Dani, Sofía and the others is an example of how a generation and their caregivers try to find balance. There are no magic solutions: neither absolute prohibition nor total permissiveness fixes the issues on its own. What did seem to make a difference was constant conversation, willingness to accompany, and the practice of concrete agreements that turn the phone into a conscious tool rather than something that drags them along. Months passed and the pacts weren’t always followed to the letter, but coexistence improved: fewer screens at dinner, more games in the plazas, checking dubious content and more support among friends when conflict arose. Facing the complexity of the web required patience, mistakes and adjustments, but it also generated new skills: critical thinking, digital empathy and a sense of shared responsibility. As they said goodbye before summer, Lúa looked at everyone and, in her calm way, summed up what they had been learning: “I don’t want it taken away from me; I want to learn to use it. I want to be able to decide and not have someone decide for me without explaining.” Hugo smiled. “Then let’s start with that: decide together, make mistakes together and help each other when needed.” And so, between imperfect pacts and long kitchen conversations, the young people built a difficult but possible balance: being present in the real world without giving up the connections that also shape them. Source of the images. Image created with Bing.