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Stéphane Clerget (Child psychiatrist)
Ten Ten, the new favorite application for teenagers, allows you to turn your phone into a walkie-talkie and receive audio messages… even when your phone is locked. One more intrusion that raises questions. Should we fear it? Stéphane Clerget, child psychiatrist gives us his opinion.
If you have teenagers with smartphones, perhaps you’ve heard of Ten Ten. The booming application, apparently harmless, intends to transform the phone into a walkie talkie. “Sing, shout or whisper… your friends will hear each other in real time, even when the phone is locked” announce download page. If the app is already creating a mess in progress (as one can easily imagine), it could also expose your child to other, more harmful consequences.
A lack of data security
Faced with the scale of the phenomenon (downloads are exploding) the first critical voices are being raised. Notably that of Camille Chaize, spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories, who is worried about the repercussions.
“Behind the fun, there are serious dangers for private life and online security. Ten Ten’s privacy policy, currently being finalized, sets out the scope of the data collected: names, telephone numbers, nicknames, contact preferences. According to her, the application also collects IP address, location and other sensitive information.
One more path to harassment and bad encounters
Data security isn’t Ten Ten’s only problem. According to the spokesperson, the application could also participate in harassment situations. “Even when the screen is locked, contacts can send instant messages. This increases the risk of online harassment and invasion of privacy.” Especially if the messages are constantly piling up.
As for bad encounters, they are also possible: if the network does not offer friend suggestions, but only a code to offer to its contacts, some of these codes coming from teenagers in search of popularity already find themselves published publicly on other networks such as Tik Tok. We can easily imagine the possible gearing.
An intimacy that is gradually disappearing in our children
Contacted on the subject, Dr. Stéphane Clerget, child psychiatrist and author of “The Brain Doctor” (ed. Leduc, 2024), who notes this craze among adolescents, recognizes the possible risks, but sees it more as a problem of intimacy, of private life which is disappearing among the younger generations.
“The risks of harassment are probable. But this application also directly affects the privacy of adolescents: they are now recorded or can receive messages without their knowledge, as an extension of what already existed (and when they were already very involved ). We can wonder if this is not linked to their difficulty in being alone, to a great anxiety of loneliness or a need for a permanent bond as if something could happen to them since then. more in connection with each other.
For the expert, with Ten Ten, adolescents are launching into a universe where the private sphere no longer exists.
“Teenagers are losing the notion of privacy, which is also the notion of freedom. Staying connected 24 hours a day, without any interruption, that reflects something of this generation, but it is worrying. We have recreated Big Brother,” he worries.
The importance of valuing private life in the family
If it is therefore not a question of resenting or completely banning Ten Ten, professionals therefore agree with an emergency: that of promoting the notion of intimacy, within the family. For Camille Chaize, it is an opportunity to review the use of social networks:
- Take the time to discuss and inform your children about the risks. The use of Ten Ten should be done with great caution.
- Advise them to turn off notifications at night and in quiet places like school, and ask them to limit who is allowed to send voice messages.
- Also educate children about the dangers of online harassment and cyberbullying.
For Dr. Clerget, it is the transmission of the notion of private life that should guide us and matter to us as parents.
“If you want your child to understand and respect the notion of privacy, to feel confident when cut off from others, it is already a question of respecting it in the family context. This means not control your children constantly (by GPS, etc.) but to give them a space of freedom, to respect their privacy, to knock on their door, etc. As parents too, we must relearn not to share everything, not to share everything. not be entirely transparent (about our political ideas, our love life, etc.). Teaching them modesty and private life also means asking the question of what we transmit.