Children and screens: In search of lost time [Report].

The ten members of the panel of experts note the consequences of overexposure to screens in terms of children's health and development. The logic of the market turns children into commodities, and companies take advantage of every cognitive bias to manipulate them. In conclusion, they put forward 29 guiding proposals broken down into more operational measures.

"After three months' work, the Commission has become convinced that it must assume a discourse of truth to describe the reality of the hyper connection suffered by children and the consequences for their health, their development, their future, for our future too... That of our society, that of our civilization, and perhaps even that of our humanity."

Proposed measures include

• attacking and banning the addictive and confining nature of certain digital services, in order to give young people back their choices;
• protect rather than control children;
• assume and organize a progression in children's use of screens and digital technology according to their age;
• seriously prepare young people for their autonomy on screens, give them the power to act and, at the same time, give children and young people back their rightful place in community life;
• better equip, train and support parents, teachers, educators and all those who work with children, while organizing a society that puts screens and digital technology in their rightful place;
• set up an ambitious system of governance that will enable public authorities to define a genuine strategy, to have the capacity to steer it, to better support the players who work with young people and families, and to keep citizens informed.

In particular, the experts recommend :

• combat addictive services;
• prevent children under 3 from being exposed to screens;
• children under the age of 11 should not be given a cell phone, and children up to the age of 13 should be given a device without Internet access;
• authorize access to social networks on "ethical" networks from age 15;
• educate children about health issues related to screens (sleep, sedentary lifestyle, eyesight);
• combat violent, hateful, sexist, pornographic and other oriented content through education for living together;
  
• regulate the use of screens during schooling:
  • the Commission recommends that ENT should no longer be used for primary school children, to reserve these spaces for exchanges between teachers and parents.
  • At secondary level, the experts recommend combating all practices unfavorable to students in the use of ENT and Pronote, and propose, for example, disabling notifications between 7pm and 7:30am the following morning.
  • They also recommend taking stock of the place of digital technology in current teaching and educational strategies, and carrying out impact studies on each digital resource before making it widely available.
    

Consult the report Enfants et écrans, à la recherche du temps perdu (April 2024).