Lorraine Williamson
For most teenagers, leaving home without a phone feels unthinkable. For seven young people in Spain, it has become the whole point of the journey.
A group aged between 14 and 18 has taken part in a five-day Camino de Santiago experience designed to strip away the digital noise of everyday life. The project, called Desconecta en el Camino, sets out to test what happens when teenagers walk, talk and live together without mobiles, social media or the constant pressure to document every moment. Recent reports describe this year’s edition as the fifth since the initiative began.
A modern test on one of Spain’s oldest routes
The teenagers are walking the stretch between Sarria and Santiago, one of the best-known final sections of the Camino. Organisers say the route is not just about exercise or pilgrimage. It is being used as a therapeutic setting to help adolescents reconnect with the real world and with one another.
The programme is led by psychologist Gonzalo Soria, alongside psychologist Orlando García and educator Vanesa Elvira. According to reports on the initiative, participants are separated not only from smartphones, but also from social media and other personal devices, with only very limited contact with family through a simple phone supplied by the organisers.
What happens when the phone disappears
That first shock is part of the process. Soria says many teenagers arrive heavily dependent on their phones and often struggle with face-to-face communication. Some of this year’s participants had reportedly been spending more than five hours a day on their mobiles before starting the trip, while earlier coverage of the same edition said some cases ran far higher.
Once the phones are gone, the rhythm changes. Meals become conversations. Walking becomes shared time rather than scrolling background. Organisers also run individual and group sessions focused on relationships, social skills and healthier use of technology. The point is not to demonise phones, but to show that teenagers can still connect without living through a screen.
Why this story is resonating far beyond the Camino
This is landing at a time when digital wellbeing has become a serious public debate in Spain. UNICEF Spain said in late 2025 that children and teenagers are living “more connected than ever”, while wider European research has linked excessive social media use of more than three hours a day with poorer mental health outcomes in adolescents.
That helps explain why a simple story about seven teenagers walking without phones is travelling so well. It taps into a wider anxiety shared by many parents, teachers and young people themselves: whether constant connection is leaving adolescents more isolated, not less.
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Not anti-tech, but a reset
There is also something clever about the format. The Camino offers built-in structure, physical challenge and long stretches of time without distraction. Spain’s oldest walking route becomes a setting for a very modern question: what happens when teenagers are given space to be bored, to chat and to think?
Organisers say the places are highly sought after, with demand far above the number of spaces available. They also insist participation has to be voluntary. That matters. The idea is not punishment, but perspective.
Why Spain will keep having this conversation
Stories like this rarely stay as one-off curiosities. They touch a bigger shift in Spain and across Europe, where schools, families and policymakers are wrestling with the social effects of phones, notifications and permanent online life.
This Camino challenge will not settle that debate. But it does offer a striking image of another way of doing things: seven teenagers on one of Spain’s most famous routes, learning that silence, conversation and shared effort still have value when the screens are switched off.