Tech making 'our brains explode,' says filmstar Cruz

Hollywood star Penelope Cruz warned Sunday that technology was driving high anxiety that would one day make "all our brains explode".

The Spanish mother-of-two said she was worried about how children's mental health and development were being affected by the ubiquity of tech.

Actress Penelope Cruz, centre, poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Wasp Network.'

"I have my personal war with it," she told reporters at the Venice film festival.

"I wish we could have lived in the 1990s for a little longer. For mental health issues that would have helped a lot, because I think things are going at a speed that we are unprepared for," said the actress.

Cast member Penelope Cruz poses for a photograph.

Cruz, 45, who is starring in "Wasp Network", a thriller about five Cuban undercover agents who became heroes for infiltrating radical exile networks in Florida, said tech was coming to utterly dominate children's lives, hogging their time and imaginations.

"This might seem like an exaggeration to other people, but I am convinced that we were raised with a different relationships with technology," she said.

French director Olivier Assayas, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz and Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez arrive for the screening.

"Right now children and teenagers are in contact so much with electronics and it takes the time away from children to learn to play, to have conversations, to be at a table having dinner talking to their family, or to be bored -- which is something important we all should learn as children."

Spanish actress Penelope Cruz signs autographs for fans.

Cruz, who has an eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter with fellow Spanish star Javier Bardem, said our lives were being swallowed up by it.

Tech's daily dominance was "not only affecting children, but all of us.... It is something that is creating a lot of general anxiety and I wonder if this continues all of our brains are just going to explode," said the actress, who made her name in "Jamon, Jamon" when she was only 15.

Agence France-Presse