“It’s been almost a generation of children who have been exposed to pornographic content without any adult awareness”, said this Wednesday, September 28 on franceinfo Justine Atlan, director of the e-Enfance association, after the publication of a report from the Senate calling for better regulation of pornography on the internet. The director of the association calls on justice to “penalize pornographic sites” not respecting the law. “Are we really obliged to give a smartphone to a child entering sixth grade?”she also asks.
franceinfo: Is it a good thing for you that these parliamentarians are taking up this subject?
Justine Atlan, director of the e-Enfance association: Absolutely. I would say that one has the impression that it is discovered today whereas it is nevertheless almost twenty years that pornography is widely developed on the Internet today. In this case, minors are exposed to it. It is therefore almost a generation of children and adolescents who have been exposed to pornographic content without any adult awareness. It is very recent that adults, whoever they are, realize how their children are so banally, massively and easily exposed to pornographic content, when obviously, I remind you that it is totally illegal.
Should there be a vast awareness campaign for parents?
Of course it has to be done because we have a real social issue, there is indeed a huge generational gap between the generation that was born with digital technology and parents who did not know it as young people , who did not have this activity in their adolescence. These parents are incapable, and this is normal, of representing what it is today to be 12 or 13 years old with these digital tools. And then, and this is once again normal, we always think that our child is different from the others and that he will not be exposed to a certain number of risks and that he will know how to circumvent them. This means that we don’t talk to them about it and not talking about these subjects to your children is the worst thing. Protecting your children means informing and communicating. There is also the subject of school and this calls into question the missions that we are going to give to national education. Is it there only to transmit knowledge to brains? Is she there to educate children and teenagers who are developing and who need to be armed for their adult life? In adult life, there is affective and sexual life.
There are 23 recommendations in this Senate report. Couldn’t many be simply summed up as “enforcing the law”?
Absolutely. This is also one of the titles of a recommendation that may seem completely absurd. And yet, there is a law which was reinforced two years ago which stipulates that it is no longer enough to ask an Internet user if he is 18 or not to access a pornographic site, but that it is necessary give a way to verify that he is indeed 18 years old. This is an obligation made to all porn sites. Well, now, this law hasn’t applied for two years. There are several legal proceedings in progress and I must say that we are a little disarmed to see that the justice system itself lacks the courage to sanction pornographic sites.
What do you think of this recommendation to activate parental control by default on smartphones when a telephone subscription is taken out for the use of a minor?
It’s a very old idea. We’ve been asking for it for fifteen or twenty years, but it’s not been implemented at all. Installing it by default, indeed, when a subscription is taken for a minor, that would be the least of things. However, it should also be noted that there are many subscriptions that are taken out by parents who will take out a classic subscription or will give their old phone to their children. Beyond that, there is a more important question to ask: are we really obliged to give a smartphone to a child entering sixth grade? Today, we are a bit stuck with proposals from manufacturers who put us in front of a smartphone or nothing. We could perhaps rehabilitate simple telephones. A lot of parents want to give their kids a smartphone just for phone calls, not necessarily for internet access. There may also be a field to dig, to be able to offer young people a telephone with calls and SMS without necessarily having access to the internet.