My last article in this section — “Does the child still have a place in society?” caused a reaction: I argued that children no longer have places to be children. No more places for play, enthusiasm and joy. No more welcome by the intolerant adult, who shakes the scarecrow of the badly brought up child-king, incompetent parents incapable of “training” their offspring.
My field observation shows me the symptoms of these children who no longer have places to put down roots. Dug up from outside like common weeds, they are planted inside their homes under artificial light. And it is true that as soon as they are “released” to the outside and to their peers, they seem somewhat electrified and sometimes out of control, especially since they are released to go to another inside (school) that asks them to settle down. The time spent outside has become so short that I wonder if we could not speak of a pathology of incarceration for our children.
In his book Rootingthe philosopher Simone Weil names that humans have needs of body (movement is a fundamental need for children) and soul. She speaks of the need for rooting in all environments of life, in the past and future perspectives. For her, this uprooting is one of the factors that lead humans to turn to extremes.
I have observed this in my practice in Europe, when many adolescents excluded from the systems that were supposed to welcome them became radicalized by joining attractive substitutes for extreme clans.
Because of our supposedly safe choices for him, the child now experiences the outside world as a hostile and unfriendly place. The Other is also perceived as a danger: children who, however, naturally do not know the words in “ism” (racism, sexism, ableism) become increasingly distrustful and rejecting of “this other different from them”.
Deprived of places where they can naturally deploy and exercise their social skills, practice living well together, children are left in this security bubble evoked by Vincent Cocquebert in The Cocoon Civilization. They therefore wander in the marshy waters of the virtual, which offers them infinite possibilities supposedly without danger.
This offer, I see in my office with teenagers, gives them a sense of belonging, a form of “rediscovered family” that allows them to form a group and a body. We cannot blame them for this dependence on this vector of rediscovered links. Masculinist influencers are not mistaken when they suggest to our boys to “become men again” and join the clan. These teenagers harden their speech, their posture while evoking in my office a vertigo in front of these. trad wives and their ultra-aesthetic Instagram accounts also have all the clan codes to attract teenage girls in search of authentic connections.
Lost Generation
We talk about a lost generation… Indeed, it is, because we have taken away their road maps to find their way… we have taken away their places to live together, we deprive them of authentic links with us, too obsessed by our own digital issues and games.
“Ah, children are not what they used to be.” That’s true. They don’t have the latitude we had. I hear you say that on the contrary, they “allowed everything.” Let’s stop comparing ourselves to what we were, as children. The comparison is impossible, because we had the privilege of being outside, of playing. Not them. Today, we have them watched over by virtual babysitters called TV, video games and cell phones. Let’s realize it. Let’s stop blaming them for our (very bad) adult choices.
By making these negative remarks about today’s children, you are participating in this infantilism which continues to objectify them.
And you are targeting the wrong people. They are the victims of this panicked and frightening society that does not know how to see them.
It is not by radically banning their digital “means of connection” that we will help them find their way. It is by recreating an authentic connection with them, by taking an interest in their new challenges and issues, which are not the ones we had. It is by welcoming them into our living spaces, and above all by living with them, disconnected from our own digital appendages. And outside. As much as possible.