The president has assembled a committee of experts whose work must be delivered “at the end of March”.
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Emmanuel Macron calls for a resumption “control of our screens”. Among his announcements on education, Tuesday January 16, the Head of State called for regulating the use of screens by children. “We have left a lot of families without instructions. (…) We need to have a scientific consensus, that scientists begin to give us a plan and that we inform a public debate, which will come next” , he said during his press conference.
The president convened a commission of experts last week, whose work must be reported “end of March”. Based on their recommendations, “there may be bans, there may be restrictions” And “may also be restrictions on content”, he said.
The head of state said he wanted “the best scientists, (…) both epidemiologists, clinicians, sociologists, all disciplines, can tell us: before such an age, it is not reasonable to put a screen in front of a child”. As a reminder, the High Council of Public Health recommends prohibiting screens before the age of 3, “if the conditions for parental interaction are not met”.
One hour per day of screen time for 2-year-olds
A survey published in April by Public Health France reveals that 2-year-old children spend on average nearly an hour per day in front of a screen. Gabriel Attal, for his part, was recently alarmed that“a child under 6 years old spends on average 830 hours per year in front of a screen”.
The subject of screen exposureis very important for the solidity of our democracies because if we have adolescents and future citizens whose relationship with the truth has been poorly constructed, in any case constructed on social networks where the difference between the truth and the counter -truth was not clear, hello generation of conspiracy theorists”, declared Mr. Macron again. He also lambasted again “the very important role of screens” and social networks during the riots, which occurred after the death of young Nahel killed by a police officer in June. “There was a form of mimicry which led to a completely unreasonable conflagration”according to him.
Emmanuel Macron also recalled the measures implemented by his previous governments, such as the ban on cell phones in college or the obligation to install a parental control device on terminals (smartphones, computers, televisions and game consoles). ) placed on the French market. This system will be activated by default from July 2024, to protect minors in particular against pornographic content distributed on the internet, and to facilitate the use of parental control tools, which are still too little known.