<em>Meeting with young participants of a Vatican summer camp, Pope Leo XIV encouraged children to build real friendships and set limits to screens.</em>
Pope Leo XIV gave something of a masterclass on the proper use of cell phones when he met with the young participants of the Vatican summer camp, “Estate Ragazzi,” on Monday, June 22, 2026. Speaking to the children — ages 3 to 13 — of Vatican employees, the Holy Father affirmed that “God has given us an extraordinary gift in our minds and in our brains.”
During the Monday meeting in the Paul VI Audience Hall, the Pontiff specifically responded to young Federico, who asked for advice on preventing screen addiction. Technology “can be very good, and we need it for many things,” Pope Leo XIV acknowledged. He warned, however, that “there is no need to have a mobile phone, smartphone, or tablet in our hands all the time.”
Personal contact is vital
The head of the Catholic Church invited the youth to be attentive to the addictive mechanisms that designers insert into digital programs and apps. “They are designed to make us dependent on this technology,” he warned, encouraging them to be “free from these things.”
The Pope then insisted on the importance of forming real friendships. It is vital “to spend time together, to play together, perhaps even to study together — as people, not as computers or machines, not as techno-robots,” he said. He then asked the youth: “We are not all plugged in to a cable, are we?”
“We are human beings; we are persons. Personal contact with others is very important,” he stressed.
The Pope encouraged the young people to also disconnect from their devices in order to spend time with their families -- “to talk with one another, to have conversations, to enjoy being together, to play together, and also to pray together.”
“It is not enough for us all to be together, each looking at his or her own phone,” he remarked. He advised setting limits, by deciding, for example, that “After a certain time in the evening, I will no longer look at my phone,” or, “At certain times I will spend time talking with my family instead, and we will be together.”
In our relationship with God, too, he advised putting down the phone, because “even if we can have the Bible or some prayers on our phones, God does not want to look at our phones; God wants to look at our hearts and at our lives.”
Learning to think for ourselves
Asked about his numerous travels as an Augustinian missionary — resonating with the summer camp’s theme, “Around the World in 80 Days” — Pope Leo XIV again recommended not relying entirely on technology. Recalling how years ago, when one wanted to go somewhere he consulted a map, the Pope noted that he had gotten lost several times “in Italy, in other European countries, in Peru, and once even in the United States” by following his GPS.
“It is much better to learn to think for ourselves and to develop the critical judgment needed to know where we are going in life, on our journeys, and in whatever we do,” he noted. For the Pope, it’s a matter of studying well to prepare beforehand.
“I do not need my phone if my brain is working!” he declared, affirming that “God has given us an extraordinary gift in our minds and in our brains.”
During the meeting, the Pontiff was named Chief Explorer by the youth, who presented him with an exploration kit and an “Estate Ragazzi” plaque.
