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Several French media relayed some of the conclusions of the expert report on the exposure of children and adolescents to screens, submitted this Tuesday, April 30 to Emmanuel Macron. But are these really different from what has been recommended until now on a national and international scale? This is what the High Council for Public Health (HCSP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been recommending for several years.
The commission of experts commissioned by the Head of State recommends in particular prohibiting the use of screens, whatever they may be, for children under the age of 3, and banning mobile phones for children aged under 11 years old. That’s not all since specialists also recommend limiting access to cell phones between 11 and 15 years old. This would include allowing children to have a telephone from the age of 11 but without access to the internet until the age of 13, then without access to social networks until the age of 15. Recommendations which would ultimately not be so far from those made by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the global level and by the High Council for Public Health (HCSP) at the national level until now, or even by certain psychiatrists from fame. The proof in threes.
Limit screens before age 5 in France
For the youngest children, namely before the age of 3, the recommendations were until now essentially the same as those formulated in the report submitted today to the President of the Republic. The HCSP recommends “proscribing [les écrans] if the conditions for parental interaction are not met”. Contrary to the new instructions made by the committee of experts, this advice only concerns the youngest, stricto sensu, but the HCSP also recommends banning 3D screens for children under 5 years old, to avoid screens in the children’s bedroom, to prohibit their use one hour before bedtime, and to “support screen consumption according to screens, categories of age and content.
As a reminder, the 2017 edition of the Junior Connect’ 2017 studycarried out by Ipsos, already revealed that children aged 1 to 6 spent an average of 4h37 on the internet per week, i.e. 55 minutes more compared to 2015, and compared to ‘only’ 2h10 in 2012. Note also that in theory , adolescents under 13 are not supposed to be able to register on social networks, and that the digital majority is even set at 15 years by the law of July 7, 2023.
What about instructions on a global scale?
The recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) in terms of children’s exposure to screens are significantly different, although here again it is a question of limiting them as much as possible before the age of 5 years. In detail, the health authority explains: “It is not recommended to place a one-year-old child in front of a screen (to watch television, a video or a video game). At two years old, one hour in front of the screen (to watch television, a video or a video game). “screen should be a maximum; less is better”. One hour maximum is also what the WHO recommends for children aged 3-4 years.
In Canada, the pediatric society hammers out the same recommendations, although the latter appear more advanced. We can read in a guide addressed to parents: “Screen time is not recommended for children under two years of age. For children two to five years of age, limit regular screen time to less than one hour per day.” However, there are no instructions related to the duration, or prohibition, for children over 5 years old. The Canadian Pediatric Society recommends, however, among other things, establishing a “family media plan”, and modifying it regularly to update “individualized time” and “content limits”, but also to talk about said content with your children and to be available and present when children use screens.
On the importance of the 3-6-9-12 rule
We can see that the new recommendations given to Emmanuel Macron are much more precise than those issued until now by the national and international health authorities, but it would be forgotten that there is a much more specific, precise and strict rule, that of 3-6-9-12developed in 2008 by the psychiatrist Serge Tisseron and regularly mentioned by the interministerial mission to combat drugs and addictive behavior. This time it is a question of avoiding screens before the age of 3, of limiting them between 3 and 6 years of age “from half an hour at 3 years to 1 hour maximum per day at 6 years of age”, of setting rules with the child between 6 and 9 years old (without specifying a time limit), then to “encourage them to manage their distracting screen time” and to favor “a flip phone without Internet or touch screen” between 9 and 12 years. Recommendations which are more similar to those presented today to Emmanuel Macron.