Citizen cybersecurity education program awarded as “Spain’s Cybersecurity Project 2025”.

On March 24, episode 2 of ALERT The Series was screened at UNICARIBE Challenge, taking advantage of the visit of Marlon Molina, cybersecurity expert and producer of the television series.

The episode deals with a story based on real events that focuses on dependence on phones, social networks, and the new digital culture. It also addresses new diseases such as nomophobia, FOMO, and FOBO.

The episode tells the story of Alejandro and Sofia, recent high school graduates who are in their first year of college. They meet on the first day of class and get used to the routine of studying, going to class, and eating. Later, they are attracted to social networks, the current communication and entertainment channel for most people, and so in order not to be left behind, they both seek how to position themselves in the digital environment.

ALERT The Series has received several awards in Spain, including the best “Cybersecurity Project of the Year 2025” awarded by the Association of Experts in New Technologies (PETEC), “Social Initiative of the Year 2025” by Top Human Leaders, and “Innovation Initiative in Education” by the Excelencia Educativa awards.

A generation that grows up connected

At present, governments have opened the debate on Internet connection at an early age, and especially the participation of minors in social networks.

Digitalization is unstoppable and children are entering social networks at ages when they still do not know how to read or write, let alone discern right from wrong. With this overexposure are born new diseases such as dissociation between reality and virtual, FOMO, FOBO, nomophobia, phubbing, Google effect (or digital amnesia), cyberchondria, and many more that afflict a new generation that in a few years should take the leadership of society.

Currently, cyber attacks focus not only on economic theft, but also on attacks on values, democracy and public order. Criminals win in “troubled waters”.

Education has been and will continue to be the best of tools. “Awareness is not enough, in cybersecurity we must raise the bar on cybersecurity education,” says Molina.

What is nomophobia?

Nomophobia is a term that comes from the English expression “no-mobile-phone-phobia”. It is defined as the irrational fear or extreme anxiety that a person feels when not having access to his or her phone.

It is not just “wanting to see the cell phone”, but a sense of vulnerability, isolation or panic when the device runs out of battery, has no signal or is forgotten at home.

This disease joins others such as FOMO which is much more popular and is the “fear of missing out on something”, the reason why a person constantly consults the phone; or FOBO (Fear of Being Offline) closely linked to nomophobia, it is the specific fear of being disconnected from the Internet. While nomophobia focuses on the object (the cell phone), FOBO focuses on the loss of the network connection.