Too young to scroll? French panel calls for curbs on screen time for youth • FRANCE 24 English

Too young to scroll? French panel calls for curbs on screen time for youth • FRANCE 24 English

ah the ravages of too much screen time for me the axe fell when I brought home my first report card in the 6th grade my TV viewing time was curtailed to a single hour a day now this was before the Internet it’s now been three decades since mobile phones went mainstream nearly two since the Advent of the tablet and the smartphone and what have we got many teachers and psychiatrists uh link long hours of scrolling and exposure to Violent pornographic images cyber bullying anxiety and sleep deprivation among a generation whose attention span has shrunk we’ll ask about a panel that’s just submitted recommendations to France’s president starting with a ban on smartphones for youth under 13 what’s the right measure in a connected world what responsibility for parents teachers the tech Giants whose entire business model rests on keeping us on our screens as long as possible can the curbs be enforced after all for all of my own parents’ good intentions I did manage to skirt that 1hour a day rule on TV watching today in the France 24 debate how to regulate scream time for young people uh with us from the French city of M child psychiatrist and Le BMI member of the collective against overexposure to screens thanks for joining us hello thank you former High School teacher today associate professor of English at the s University Gabriel latonio welcome back to the show thank you thank you for having me Bernard benamu Secretary General of The Institute of digital sovereignty Think Tank I guess you could call it an advocacy group for European Tech exactly that’s a a way to see it and that’s precisely what we try to promote to promote a a third way for Europe between China and the us we’ll see how that falls when it comes uh to regulating all of this from Columbus Ohio therapist Sarah Hayes of save point Behavioral Health uh whose uh focus is a lot on Geeks and Gamers as you put it welcome to the show Hello thank you hi your reactions on the hash f24 debate and before we delve into the report’s recommendations let the overwhelmed parent who’s never parked their child before a cartoon cast the first stone James Vina has more the question is are you willing to stop your children from spending their day in front of screens what’s crazy about it is that on one side I agree but my daughter has a phone I think that social media especially should be limited we should know what they’re doing on it but without necessarily bringing in a ban yeah that’s the conclusion of the study that’s been carried out for president Emanuel maon no phones before the age of 11 no smartphones until 13 and no social media for under 15s I think that for social media it’ll be complicated because we learn a lot through it on one hand I think they’re right but sometimes it’s fun to pass the time we learn we laugh dozens of towns in France have Tred no screen periods and children recognize that the 10-day test isn’t easy I used to be on screens all evening now I do my homor and then I play I’m reading more spending more time outside teachers noticed there was less tension among children if there’s an argument the day before it isn’t aggravated via their phones in the evening and parents picked up on changes too our little one forgets to go to the toilet because she’s so glued to our television we don’t have that problem anymore 56 minutes a day for 2year olds over 3 hours for teenagers an average screen time that experts say affects Children’s Health including their ability to concentrate 56 minutes a day for two-year-olds what does that tell you Gabrielle it’s a lot so I remember when I was teaching high schoolers uh I I felt myself that I was quite the you know the technophile and and I I I remember talking to my high school students asking them how much time they spent on their cell phones myself I would spend three and a half hours 4 hours maybe and they showed me their phones and the answers I got went from 6 hours a day to 8 hours a day when I saw that I realized that something was wrong for sure when did you first feel that something was wrong I’ve been teaching for a bit more than 15 years now and and I do see a few trends that worry me so you you you see something happening when it comes to how tired they might be in the morning cuz they’ve been on their phone under their blanket I remember being 15-year-old listening to the radio you know until midnight or something but but they would use their phone until very much you know the the the worst time you can imagine there there attention is not so good I think there’s more demand for you know the material we use in class to be more fun which I think is good and valid to some extent um they they they’re not so willing to engage with texts they might be more willing to engage with video but if they are willing to engage with video it will not be just any video it has to be short and quick I am very surprised now I teach at the sbon I teach I teach adults and and you would be surprised maybe not the majority but a good number of young adults in France say they don’t watch movies for instance and it’s actually a surprise for them when I tell them look if you want to know about American history which is what I do I say watch Spielberg’s Lincoln it’s a transon and they say oh it was such a long movie it’s a trans might be pretty pretty long movie although I enjoyed it but yeah no sure so quality attention time tiredness there’s all that b what’s the trend that you’ve observed sorry I didn’t hear the question it just cut what what was the what’s the trends that over the years you’ve observed when it comes to attention span among young people sorry it got to to the children the impact you mean the attention span how much they pay attention and do all right we’re going to try to reconnect and uh try to to fix the fix the line with M apologies for that how about you Sarah Hayes tell us have you noticed a trend over the years a trend of shortening attention spans with lengthening screen time so actually I think that that shows more of a trend of consumption than a trend of physical symptom the things that teens children enjoy think of it like reading a A short segment of a book getting caught into a good story and reading a long segment of a book it’s the same as watching a short video versus getting into and watching a long movie like Lincoln oh go ahead we’re we’re listening Sarah yeah okay sounds good in my work at take this we do a lot of Outreach and workshops and education around video games and screens and how there’s a lot of research out there that actually shows that depending on the games or the content they’re consuming it might actually help with a variety of cognitive experiences and um and skill skills so so what you’re saying is that longer screen time is not necessarily a problem yes I think that there’s a a big role that families can play that parents can play in helping regulate just like any other activity like homework should happen before play right theoretically so homework should happen before screen time just like that that Sweet Child said on the video I think that that’s important to pay attention to that there’s balance between screen time and other things we do but regulating it on on a broad scale might not be the answer so you’re against for instance that we’re going to talk about in a moment this idea of banning smartphones for children under 13 I think that that’s a question mark I don’t think a blanket ban is is as effective or um it’s an extreme response in my perspective compared to like not every child should have a cell phone but sometimes there’s circumstances that make it logical to have a cell phone like if a child has lots of afternoon activities and a parent is trying to coordinate and keep track of them it might make a lot of sense for them to have a cell phone what about in that case a dumb phone you know like an like an old Nokia a dumb phone might be an answer that is a good answer and that’s that’s the point I’m trying to make is that it’s contextual I think it’s so subjective that having a blanket band might not be the answer as much as having context and and Parental Guidance around like I think my child is is at an appropriate developmental point to have a cell phone rather than having a blanket legislation that says smartphones are not okay when there’s research out there that contradicts that there’s a lot of benefits all right so you you you hear there uh ber benamu an edict from on high is not the way to go when it comes to these issues I’m not surprised that our American friend is saying that regulation is the bad thing we are very famous in Europe for some times over regulating but in that matter I consider that uh there are uh so many studies showing that for the very young kids uh who are getting ad addicted to smartphones from the age of two to to the age of nine uh indeed it’s difficult to to restrict or to have that blanket ban that we were talking about but indeed at this moment we have so many proof that it’s dangerous for their cognitive development and maybe our in guest will say that too but it’s it’s dangerous there is what we call in our field in education The Tick Tock syndrome meaning that uh we are making kids addict or pushing them to addiction for for that kind of short videos and we’ve seen just a few days ago it was after the the report was made that Tik Tok was about to launch in Europe Tik Tok light yeah Tik Tok light where you would get rewards reward addiction foray that’s exactly the logic of the dealer you you are paying for addiction at first the first dose is free and then you are rewarding the person who is a good a good customer that’s exactly what we don’t want and that’s interesting to see that the European Union has been conducting a study about that and Tik Tok decided to to back to back down so basically it’s do we want to get even deeper in addiction for those kids who would be unable to have social relationships I I would be very interested in knowing what our psychiatrist say your thoughts on this um I do think that um the a regulation um has to has to be um with children and with their cell phone and especially with smartphone because anyway um in with most of children there is an addiction and um between um you know going out doing some Sport and having a look on few things on on their smartphone the children will choose the smartphone and when they have too too much time on it they cannot do they um a good development and this is a real problem for for babies children and teenagers yeah we we had a a report come out last fall uh which uh kids entering the sixth grade so 12-year-olds uh Gabrielle lonz uh asked simple math questions one of them was how many quarter hours are there in 34s of an hour and half of them got the answer wrong right and can you blame that on phones and screens or is that an exaggeration well it’s the result of collective decisions made by adults and when it comes to the digital world we certainly have not been making decisions we’ve created a world that’s been in the hands of those who use them but we have not uh decided to have any sort of control over it now I’ll be honest I had a computer in my room when I was like three because my parents both worked in computer science so I do think screens can make you smarter and I do think that making it illegal entirely is a bad reform and I’m all for it and I’ll tell you why I think I’m all for it I’m all for it because it will get the ball rolling we just need to do something it’s not something I would have said 10 20 years ago when I was younger having taught with a number of high schoolers I can tell you we need to do something this measure will be stupid it will be bad but when we undo it we will have no choice but to make it better but there’s no way you can convince anyone that this is not something adults should do something about all right let’s go over some of the recommendations uh in the report uh just just some of the big ones here no screens before the age of three smartphone ban for youths under the age of 13 economic actors that is you know the big tech companies must provide an absence of health risk proof uh the right to parental settings uh when you have a a new website or a new app regulation of screens for schooling and education uh among uh teen on the health risks on the health risks of uh of screens uh B benamu if you’re to pick and choose what’s the most important of those recommendations the lwh hanging fruit that they should do now oh obviously for under three uh the the fact that uh uh the the youngest kids don’t have um interactions with the physical world is dangerous for their cognitive development that has been proven many times so for me the lwh hanging fruit to to pick your expression is that but obviously for social networks which are heavily used and can be a har harassment Tools in schools I guess there is something to do and we were with a group working for the with the the group The Thinking group of the future of information and uh decided by President M and I was advocating for something that could certainly scare our American friends but Maybe not today uh a total ban on Tik Tok because obviously the Chinese are not only having an impact in terms of addiction but also an interference tool that inspiring tool that is too dangerous not to be not to be regarded as something that we have to stop at some moment the Tik Tok light was stopped I guess next will be Tik Tok itself which is obviously the one with the most traction among kids and young adults these days so for me it’s it’s a matter of uh not being foolish about the future of our kids and of our education system which can be heavily impacted by those Technologies uh last week uh yeah as we were saying Tik Tock which is owned by China’s bite dance bowing to pressure from the European commission suspending a Rewards program on the spin-off Tik Tock light as mentioned by B now here uh in France and Spain this after the threat of a suspension by Brussels turns out that while Tik Tock lights targeting Europe’s youth since last year Chinese authorities have set a 60-minute default time limit per day for users under 18 at times for under certain conditions it is slightly extendable uh but still what what what does that tell you Sarah Hayes and do you do you agree about the this idea that there that some of these social media are addictive and some of these uh uh these programs are addictive thank you for calling back to that because I was I was about to if you didn’t um there is no I would love to see if someone has something contradicting this but to my knowledge there is no evidence that media itself is addicting but rather it serves a function there’s a core issue here that we’re not discussing at all which is the mental health behind what’s happening and usually it’s inverted to the way that we’re discussing it it’s not that screen time causes mental health problems that’s untrue the truth is mental health problems might exist bullying exists in schools without screens like everyone is existing in the physical world but at the same time screens are all around us we’re on screens right now which is amazing it gives us this connectivity in all of these other contexts buts can people use it problematically yes is it something that is used as a coping tool to cover up something else but Sarah if you isn’t isn’t this if you replace the words uh social media uh and and have the same isn’t that argument of the gun lobby that it’s not it’s not the guns that kill people but it’s mental health problems I don’t think that there’s an I don’t know that there’s a direct parallel there however regulations can be helpful like having a an application to make sure that someone has a sound experience of Mind before they are able to purchase a gun however at the same time that’s not the same as teens using a mobile device that are literally all around them like was stated in the very beginning of the segment kids are going to find a way around this stuff if parents have phones or tablets they’re going to get onto them when when computers are around in the house they’re going to figure out how to use them they’re going to be advancing in this technology whether we like it or not so should there be some form of management of children’s use yes do I think that any of us need screens to survive to develop absolutely not but are there benefits yes are there dangers absolutely but also parents should be aware of of the social media apps that their children’s their children are using is Tik Tok a political debate absolutely and not something I’m going to Bro into other than acknowledging like yes there are some things politically to pay attention to and what apps should be present in which countries absolutely a legislative decision to make but parents and what’s allowed in schools and such should be in my opinion The Regulators of what apps are my children using what are they watching what are they looking at what movies are they watching a similar analogy and parallel that we’ve had in in our growing up where like my parents wouldn’t let me watch rated R movies until I was old enough to watch them per the the the regulations there but I could have if they wanted me to that was their decision they followed that on their choice but that’s my parents choice and I respected their choice as a child because they taught me about it they explained to me why being in certain contexts or using certain whatever it was bad and good and so I followed that guidance rather than having a blanket statement B do you agree well um I I do think that that there is a real addiction with um um using too much screen and um about the the commission I think that it’s very important to stop um giving strings to Children before three and and to give um a smartphone before 13 it could be it can be very dangerous and and children teenager they cannot regulate by themselves and I must say it’s it’s very confusing for for the parents for the family because since yesterday everything was um possible or or you know there was no um no things said to regulate screens and and the parents were were lost and now that this Mission did this huge work and and I we really do thank them for for this big big work it will be clearer for the family to regulate and to to be convinced that they have to be with their children and to stop uh giving too much screen so Lee based on your experience can you break it down for us um at what age should there be a blanket up until what age should there be a blanket ban on screens the recommendation here is 3 years old uh what age should kids be allowed to have a smartphone uh your thoughts on this what we think um with um our Collective cause um is to allow a teenager to have a smartphone uh with 15 because we think that before that they don’t need any uh cell phone really they they have to develop their mind to find solution to uh ask help for people if they have a problem and and they have to discuss with them parents to find um the way to um you know to to do without cell phone um and after 15 they can have a smartphone but they have to be accompanied by their parents to see as said before what they can use what they can watch and um what is dangerous and if they um they there is bullying things like that so um the main word for me is 15 years old and and um the parents to accompany and to help their children to use it right so on the question is on whether or not there is literature about screens causing addictions and mental health issue Etc and so on you because some people had said that uh the because screens are so recent in scientific terms we just to answer that one of the last books I read is called the anxious Generation by Jonathan height it came out two months ago he’s a social psychologist feel free to make the case it’s bad literature but it exists that point is made the general observation is we see problem with bulimia anorexy we see people who kill themselves we see more interpersonal violence between boys Etc and so on we do see a number of Statistics that are very worrisome for those born after 2000 or actually for those born after 1990 so that literature exists but I’ll tell you one more thing FR it’s not so much that in my opinion screens cause violence I’ve played GTA and I’m as p as as as anyone can be but I’m telling you that violence happens through screens so I’m not looking at the causality between screens and violence I am tell have we gotten better have we gotten better in 20 years at um at detecting cyber bullying for instance but it’s not just cyber bullying look F this is firsthand witness here talking I have seen high schoolers where I taught in Lea kill each other and it’s not because of screens in the suburbs of Paris yes in 2008 2019 2021 and denounced it very vehemently and I will keep doing so Forever at one point in the story of each of those killings kids talk to each other online yeah and so it’s a moment in a story of Dramas so I’m not just telling you look this might cause anxiety ET that point has been made my point is as someone who worked with kids I have seen how these devices have created tragedies the the authors of the report were clear to say that you can’t blame violence on and and these are people calling for regulation you can’t blame the violence on screens sure you you can’t blame Tarantino you can’t blame video games I agree with that I mean I’m I’m a fan of those but the question is how far do we go when we say it’s down to parents or it’s down to kids I’m not that hands off I do think we need to make decisions Collective decisions so does Sarah Hayes have a point uh bamu when she talks about uh the fact that Tik Tok is political after all when you hear when you hear uh gabad talk about the the the the the anxieties the how do I look the bulimia the anorexia issues and you think Instagram well it’s not Chinese it’s American it’s American yes uh is it why just Tik Tock no it’s different because when it’s about uh big Tech in the US we are in a position to negotiate are we really Mark Zuckerberg has power on the board of his meta he he calls all the shots with you difficult but we have tools dma DSA the regulations which are about to be implemented now uh are powerful tools and they can be like gdpr for protection of data or privacy they can be have an impact on the structure of those companies but with China the difference is they have a political agenda which is directly against democracies try to find content against China on Tik Tok and I wish you luck so at this moment they and try to find content against Russia and you will find very few very few so at this time they have a political agenda it’s a different topic I agree Let’s find let’s talk about but hang on on on on Tuesday the European commission opened an inquiry against meta because of disinformation campaigned coming from I don’t consider to be complicit to those disinformation campaign in a way are doing very few against it because their revenues their advertising revenues come from radical and polarizing content that’s true all right so they’re not enabling it but at the same time they’re making money off of they are benefiting from it that’s true but for for China it’s very interesting because uh the we talk about Tik Tok Tik Tok in China has another name it’s another company it’s it’s the same group but another company called duin and there it’s limited at 40 minutes a day crazy so basically and it’s about education science management it’s not about entertaining the the kids so in a way they are selling us a product that they know can be addictive and they want it to be highly addictive for people to use it several hours a day and for them no that’s that’s where I see a kind of hypocrisy and at this moment I consider that there is a risk for polarizing opinion for uh election campaigns 4 billion citizens are going to elections this year alone so basically are we allowing that to be uh to be uh spread especially on kids which are are basically fragile about convictions about politics well and we see that today with the radicalization of all the political movements do we want that to happen is the problem social media or is it just screens in general both I would say both actually because when they are with the screen they don’t think properly and they don’t do what they are supposed to do to do their proper development and in the other way what they see will influence them to think or to do things that could be um terrible and um as said before tragic so both are a problem really now here in France We’re a nation that loves to pile on the homework uh will adults practice what they preach since the pandemic teachers have stuck with app pronote uh for handing out assignments it can be an issue argues the co-chair of the commission on exposure to screens to Children the one that submitted that report on Tuesday to the French President it’s the right to disconnection which we give to adults in the workplace yet not to children in schools this means that children can get notifications at all times about homework they need to finish or marks that have been uploaded on pronote and so on so they check them compulsively at night or when they wake up so we need to give the right of disconnection to children as well is that something easy to correct no it’s not but it goes both ways why is it not easy to correct no it’s it’s it’s about self-discipline I guess look as long as you have emails you can get you can either you know use it or not you’ll have you’ll have teachers and they should not use WhatsApp with their students which is really a big mistake and it’s against the rules but no it goes the other way around just just I don’t know if it’s fun but to me that was very telling I gave an assignment last week about American history and I had an email that was two pages long from a student who was telling me um I didn’t understand quite well how the Democratic party you went from being the party of secessionists to become the party of Barack Obama can you explain that again and then another question about FDR or Teddy roselt can’t remember basically I had to do my whole you know uh seminar all over again through email and I do get those emails again so it goes both ways sometimes you have students using technology no of course not of course not no no no no no no I I I try to have a life I iend my OverWatch at night than then answer my my students emails but yeah sure screens are a problem in that regard as well of course and does that anecdote speak to uh a difficulty in managing our time yeah at least I don’t think the solution can come from self-discipline I don’t know like if I told my mother just don’t use Tik Tok for 45 minutes oh my God she would not respect that limit she would hate China she would absolutely need you know more time to spend on Tik Tok same with kids even more true for kids same for myself we need rules we need rules how do we make them happen you know when it comes to addictions what do we do do we make it pricier that’s the strategy with with cigarettes right it’s not about money in that case it’s going to be about you know what we program into the the machines uh what we’re seeing Sarah Hayes is that uh uh the big companies that uh are are making money off of the internet because at the end of the day a lot of the fact that there is a lack of regulations uh about the fact that it’s big business um they’re doing things like um favoring uh pushing uh on online gaming on a younger and younger audience uh isn’t there again it’s the question of uh uh the reason why there’s a light touch on regulation isn’t because of the children’s well-being but because there’s money to be made indeed well I think honestly it would be very silly for businesses to not make what they’re trying to push appealing that’s the whole model of running a business you want to make money of course and that’s part of why screens are such a hot debate because we we find them enticing they are cognitively enticing I would encourage using the word enticing instead of Addicting because yes they’re enticing yes they they pull us in they are engaging they light up so many uh brain centers that that show enjoyment and attention however at the same time things like online games have a lot of benefits too they can help with hand eye coordination they can help with mental acuity they can help with memory and they can offer social contact there’s a lot of benefits that re shows but I would also encourage with this sort of thing like I want to call back to the part about regulating and thinking about like that book for example the anxious generation I just want I have to call out I can’t I’m so sorry I want to challenge that much like when I was in my doctoral program or whenever I do research we use language around like Association it’s it’s uh it’s a correlation not causation screens don’t cause addiction um that sort of okay how do you explain them the fact that how do you explain the fact that students uh are and I’ve spoken to many professors who say this are much more anxious uh than they were 20 years ago why and add well I think there’s well and as a person with ADHD I can say that more people are being diagnosed it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist in the past we’re just recognizing it better and more able to diagnose it but ultimately students are more anxious for a myriad of reasons there’s so much on in the world there’s constant War like okay as a millennial I’ve grown up in how many wars we’re in an economic State that’s worse than the Great Depression here in the US there’s there’s like to think of who could be our next president is enough to make me want to go visit another country so like the anxiety levels are caused by so many things we cannot Point directly so many things that are on our smartphones well sure but they’re still out there whether the smartphones are there or not also parents are anxious because they’re consuming the news and information so of course they’re going to be anxious and their kids are sitting there watching them be anxious and wonder why so whether or not they have the screens they’re still going to get this information the segment before this one was about the war on Gaza and of course that’s going to be anxiety-provoking because it’s scary because people are dying because awful things are happening in this world so of course there’s more anxiety than 20 years ago because there’s more world problems things are more more world problems than 20 years ago now uh I guess there are geopolitics crisis and and many other things but the problem is and we have seen that and we have studied that the attention span is obviously at risk with those tools and I I was mentioning the cognitive development of kids and the fact that things that could have been experienced outside of the screen are not and for example uh geospatial abilities are not the same with kids spending heavily time on those screens saying that those Services which have been attacked including at the US Congress for Instagram that you were mentioning for having dangerous effects on kids and especially girls about an anorexia about suicide and so on that imagining that those services are completely guilt-free about the effect imagining that there is no intention that could be derived from because it’s unfiltered exactly and the fact that kids access porn at at age unimaginable for Our Generation between eight and and eight and nine in average now and and many other things the the the fact is we have been lazy in terms of uh U noticing the risks and look we were mentioning the risk uh about guns but look how long it took for tobacco industry to admit the risk some don’t even admit it today they decades after they were launching their product B um when you think about uh the the cognitive the the way our brain is affected by these social media are humans changing because of uh screens indeed they do I wouldn’t say that I would say that um you were just speaking about anxiety and um well and and then depression um I do think that brain needs uh since ever to have breaks you know it needs not to be stimulated all the time and the problem with other uh exposure uh to screens is that they they are um um advertising they are um um how could I say that they are thinking and and um all the time and they cannot um stay stable with with with their brain and like I would say like when when a child or a teenage is with um the the smartphone all the time it’s like on his own it’s like it would be in the street on his own without any protection without any control so why wouldn’t we not um accept that a child would stay on his own outside and why would we uh accept that he would stay on his room uh behind a screen and Expos um with all the the world that this is a nonsense when we think about it so we really have to protect them gabrion right so going back on whether or not today’s times are are you know might cause anxiety I mean sure you can’t be happy about everything but but uh let’s be real today is not worse than the Great Depression I just heard that you know life expectancy was around what 63 65 year old people didn’t have bathrooms at home let’s let’s put things in perspective it’s not true that life is worse today than it’s been 50 60 years ago we have plenty of data to prove that more anxiety triggering well look well of course rather deal with anxiety than people dying in The Grapes of Wrath you know if you read Steinbeck you can tell how bad it was of course I’d rather deal with anxiety than starving to death now the the the the situation when it comes to uh the the the point I would really like us to make today is let’s listen to the youth if you ask them do you think it’s a net positive or a net negative for your life social networks they’ll have a different answers when they talk about screens screens they’ll say yes I have fun it’s games it’s so on when they talk about social media oh my God yes young girls especially will tell you how much they spare this brings so we need to listen to them we need to listen to them and you think you think it’s changing humans indeed sure it is I mean it’s faceless interactions it’s faceless interactions risk-free interactions of and responsibility free interaction listen do you do you like who you are online I don’t like myself online sometimes you know my life partner she tells me I don’t recognize you when I read your Twitter feed and it’s true it’s not me I’m quite a happy person and and I’m I’m just a bit more bitter online so and I and I do think there’s a consensus there we don’t like who we are online our interactions are faceless we don’t see the consequences on the face of someone when we tell them something imagine if you have never experienced someone’s sadness of course bullying is worse now something’s interesting about that it’s about the fear of missing outs that kids experience if you ask them will take social networks away from you they’ll tell you no if you tell them everyone’s off until you’re 15 they’re okay with it what they fear missing out is the experience that their classmates might have and the experience itself is not what they miss what they miss is actually the connection they might have with others so we need to go back to actually Institute seeing people’s faces when we talk to each other see how how you guys drive same thing ahead of uh uh the report uh there was a major speech last week on Europe at the Salone University by The French Press president Emanuel Macon said Screen Time for Kids was an EU wide issue today for a number of hours every day we let our children open the door to a jungle we let them be exposed to risks of cyber bullying of pornography of pedophilia this space is what it is because it’s not regulated moderated we need to get back control over our children and our teenagers lives and to impose a digital age limit of 15 years old and not earlier throughout Europe Take Back Control well that that was kind of that was the slogan for brexit wasn’t it but uh I guess it was not the the same option about it but let me let me ask you Bernard benamu uh emanu mcon says an EU wide problem y can you can I mean what can you do though really at this point in time at this point in time we have to make people conscious and especially parents but not only all citizens conscious that there is uh a risk for the next Generations not only this one the one in school now but if the trend is prolonged that will be a risk for social so socialization for all the the Social Links that are completely artificial we were mentioning Twitter which is the the epitome of the uh uh hanger management non-management issue so at this moment do we want to have a covid generation for 20 years that the the kids we were obliged to be at home the whole time connected in a very very narrow way and do we want that to be the new normal for the Next Generation I guess I guess not Sarah Hayes is this just a French and European discussion that we’re having or is this conversation where you are I think it’s worldwide here’s the thing I think we’re having two conversations at once I think there’s Nuance here between content moderation versus access to technology do I think we should blanket cut off access to technology no because kids are still around it we still have phones and televisions like you’d have to completely remove those out however content well any age but content moderation content moderation is what I think is important that’s what I think we need to manage education for parents about how technology is used how it works what’s happening I think globally we need more of that learn what your kids are playing to enforce content moderation you need regulation then indeed you need education education regulation is about educating parents and that’s the core in where you are uh this report coming out on Tuesday is it going to make a splash is it going to make people think definitely actually um since few years people well parents start to think um about screens about the use and and with this huge uh work of the commissions and with these rules quite clear it’s going to be um really helpful for the parents to to set um a clear regulation to their children we we we do have hope I must say with this um with with with the rules of the that the commission um gave um to to help parents and families to have a I would say normal life um with the screens it’s not the question to to BN all the screens it’s just to to to learn to um use them wisely really I want to thank you so much Li B for being with us from M I want to thank Sarah Hayes in Columbus Gabrielle lonio Bernard benamu thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate [Music]

Concerns over “too much screen time” for youngsters are nothing new. In pre-internet days, young people sometimes saw their TV viewing curtailed as a punishment. But it’s now been three decades since mobile phones went mainstream, and nearly two since the advent of the tablet and the smartphone. Many teachers and psychiatrists link long hours of scrolling and exposure to violent and pornographic images, as well as cyberbullying, anxiety and sleep deprivation among a generation whose attention span has shrunk.
#Screen time #Education #digital

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