The year is 1965. The Surgeon General of the United States has just submitted a powerful report on cigarettes. The US Congress decides to put a warning on packages warning that smoking can “be dangerous to your health”.
Let’s move the cursor forward to 2024. America’s chief medical officer is once again sounding the alarm on a product that can be habit-forming: social media. As with cigarettes, he calls for a mandatory warning warning parents of “significant dangers” for the “mental health of young people”.
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is a real public health crisis that we must take much more seriously.
Beyond three hours a day on social networks, adolescents are twice as likely to suffer from mental health problems, explains the chief surgeon of the United States in an open letter published in the New York TimesMonday1.
Anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide… young people are not doing well. If some experts believe that the cause and effect link with social networks is not proven, the fact remains that the indicators have deteriorated since the mobile phone entered our lives.
It’s urgent. We must act.
The Quebec government therefore did well to launch a “Special Commission on the impacts of screens and social networks on the health and development of young people”. It is gratifying to know that MPs from all four major parties are working together on this transpartisan exercise, which will enable thoughtful decisions to be made in the best interests of children.
Should we impose a “numerical majority” at 16 which would force young people to obtain parental consent to open an account? Seven out of ten Quebecers support this measure, according to a SOM survey carried out for The Press. But the formula has its limits. After having legislated to this effect, France is struggling to put the measure into practice due to lack of consensus on the means of verifying age.
Is it better to impose a warning on social media platforms, as the US surgeon general suggests? For cigarettes, this approach, combined with other measures, has been a success. The proportion of smokers among American adults has fallen from 42% to 12% over the past six decades.
But if we want young people to give up their mobile phones, we could start by letting them play outside.
It is inconceivable that school service centers and cities prevent children from playing ball in the playground or basketball in a park designed for this purpose, because a handful of neighbors complain that it is too much noise2, 3.
It is absurd to see municipalities taking great pleasure in prohibiting young people from playing hockey or ball in the street, a tradition which has never hurt anyone.
In Les Cèdres, for example, “those who want to play in the street must fill out a form, have 66% of the residents on their street sign, present their request to the recreation director who will analyze it and forward it to the municipal council so that he speaks out. The procedure must be carried out every year”, as recently detailed by my colleague Philippe Teisceira-Lessard4.
One to zero for the municipal bureaucracy!
Can we simply rely on the good judgment of parents to determine if it is safe to let their child play in the street?
Can we let young people play sports and socialize instead of threatening them with a fine of up to $1,000?
As a society, we have our duties to do to help young people get off screens. As parents too.
In Quebec, one mother in five (21%) spends five hours or more in front of a screen (apart from work). Among fathers, the proportion is 12% during the week and 24% on weekends, according to the Grandir au Québec survey, released last week by the Institut de la tourisme du Québec (ISQ)5.
Unfortunately, this creates interference in the parent-child relationship. In fact, 18% of mothers and 15% of fathers say they are very distracted by their screen when they are with their baby.
Studies also show that the more hours parents spend in front of a screen, the lower the developmental scores of their preschoolers.
The idea is not to make anyone feel guilty, but to realize that our behavior, as adults, serves as a model for children who learn by imitation.
Parents have a crucial role to play in educating young people to make healthy use of screens which now occupy a central place in our lives, for better and for worse.
Yesterday, cigarettes. Today, social networks.
It is time for parents – and society as a whole – to mobilize to counter the negative effects of screens on young people.
1. Read the opinion letter from New York Times
2. Read the article “A basketball court closed because of a petition of 35 signatures in Beloeil”
3. Read the article “Pocketed balloon installations in a Pointe-Calumet school park”
4. Read the article “Les Cèdres: a permit required to play in the street”
5. Consult the Growing up in Quebec survey