Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has published a book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illnesswrote an article in the journal The Atlantic and, suddenly, the scales fall from the eyes of several columnists, journalists, panelists and current affairs commentators who work in different media on the subject of the ravages caused by smartphones, social networks and screens in general among children and adolescents.
But where have all these people been over the past 15 years? Had they not yet learned to read? Did they live in a cave or in a parallel world?
This is because scientific work on this subject is far from recent. I look in my modest library and see what I find. There is this remarkable book by Nicholas Carr from 2011 called Does the Internet make you stupid?. In 2012, anthropologist and psychologist Sherry Turkle published Alone together. More and more technology, less and less human relations. Three years later, she deepened her work on the negative effects of digital technology on young people with Eye to eye. The power of conversation in the digital age.
In 2015, the OECD published its document Connected to learn?, in which it is already written that “countries which have made significant investments in information and communication technologies in education have not recorded any notable improvement in the results of their students in reading comprehension, in mathematics and science. In 2017, it was the turn of psychologist Jean M. Twenge to publish her well-documented book entitled Internet Generation. How screens are making our teens immature and depressed. And how not to mention The digital moron factory. The dangers of screens for our childrenby Michel Desmurget, published in 2019!
I stop my list here, although there are several other studies to mention. However, what all these works have in common, which I have also commented on and cited in various texts published over the last 10 years, is to sound the alarm about the deleterious effects that screens and digital devices can have an impact on the physical and mental health of children and adolescents: overweight, posture and vision problems, sleep deficit, stress, anxiety, feeling of isolation, depression, lack of empathy, deficit of attention, difficulty socializing and communicating face-to-face, immaturity, fragility, not forgetting learning problems at school!
Myth of progress and technological fetishism
Although it is late, we must obviously welcome this awareness in the media. But is it the same among technopedagogues, in school management and in the Ministry of Education?
Despite the alarming findings concerning the negative consequences of screens on the psychological health of young people, many of them continue to live in denial, to believe steadfastly in the beautiful, unfounded promises that the digital lords have been dangling for years, imagine that all technological progress can only be positive, both in the world of education and in daily life.
” You can not stop progress. We’re speeding it up,” chants an Apple iPhone 12 ad. So there is no question, among the apostles of all-digital technology, of stopping to take stock, to reflect, to take a critical distance. When the myth of progress teams up with a person’s technological fetish, they become impervious to scientific evidence, the precautionary principle and doubt.
How much pressure and time it took to get the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, to admit that the telephone had no place in a classroom! However, while the French Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, informed us, as part of a visit to a Quebec school, that smartphones were banned not only in classrooms, but in primary schools and colleges in France, our Minister of Education, faithful to the wait-and-see attitude demonstrated by his government, found nothing better to say than “we are not there yet”.
Successive governments over the last 20 years have not hesitated to quickly release astronomical budgets to equip schools with computers, laptops, interactive whiteboards and digital tablets despite the absence of serious studies establishing the benefits of all this hardware on student development and learning. It is still curious to note that today they refuse to backpedal and take the screens out of these schools, even though many scientific studies demonstrate that these technologies are dangerous for this same population of young people. This is another astonishing example of the strength and influence of the myth of progress and technological fetishism in our education system!
Faced with the accumulation of evidence, testimonies and data on the negative repercussions of screens, some still end up admitting half-heartedly that there is indeed a problem, but are quick to say that the remedy should in no way involve a ban, but rather by raising awareness among young people, by making parents more responsible, by information campaigns, etc.
Yes, it is always a good thing to raise awareness among the population, but when we are faced with a serious public health problem, there comes a time when governments and those in the world of education must take their responsibilities and move on. to action. This is what was done with wearing seat belts in cars, smoking in public places, wearing masks during the pandemic, etc. Now is the time to draw the line regarding the presence of screens and smartphones in our educational institutions and their use by young people in everyday life.