“The time of science is not the time of politics” – L’Express

The screens in the viewfinder. They are everywhere, young and old use them daily and the debates they provoke are still lively. Their usefulness, benefits and above all proven or supposed misdeeds are of interest to the highest levels of the State. Emmanuel Macron thus gave them ample space, Tuesday January 16, during a press conference aimed at setting the course of the new government. The Head of State said he had brought together experts last week to determine, on the basis of their recommendations, “the proper use of screens for our children, in families, at home and in class”.

This group of experts, whose list L’Express was able to obtain (see document below), includes ten people including doctors – psychiatrist, neurologist, epidemiologist – and law professors. They will be responsible for establishing a scientific “consensus” by next March, said Emmanuel Macron. The president also asked them to propose a “how to” to decide on possible “restrictions or prohibitions” in the minimum age of access to screens but also a maximum consultation time. Questioned by L’Express, Séverine Erhel, lecturer in cognitive psychology at Rennes 2 and author of the collective work Children and Screens (Retz), did not hide her surprise at these statements.

L’Express: Is it not illusory to demand a consensus on the subject of children’s exposure to screens, especially in such a tight time frame?

Séverine Erhel: This is an announcement effect. There is a real problem with framing the demand because seeking a consensus on the proper use of screens in general makes no sense as we explain in our book. We may one day be able to obtain a consensus on beneficial practices and uses for a given population in a situated context, because the recommendations – and the issues – for three-year-old and eighteen-year-old children are not the same. same. But today, even if we are starting to obtain some answers, there are still too many studies of questionable quality, which overinterpret effects or which confuse correlations (two effects observed at the same time) and causality (one effect explains the other).

If there is no consensus, it’s not that researchers don’t want to, it’s that they can’t because it’s a complex topic that deserves more investigation. . Establishing a scientific consensus is very difficult, it involves discussions between experts publishing in a field, it cannot be decreed like that with a snap of the fingers and it cannot be limited to France because science is built internationally. . Moreover, it is not up to the government to demand a scientific consensus in the next two months, the time for science is not the time for politics and it is not up to a committee of experts appointed by a government that it is up to us to do this. Creating a scientific consensus to satisfy political demands seems to me to be in contradiction with academic freedom. The president can at best ask for a reasoned opinion, but the construction of this opinion takes time if we want to systematically examine the literature. Already, we should capitalize on the various reports coming from health agencies which have seriously done this work, such as the High Council of Public Health.

What are these “some answers” ​​that science already offers us?

Some studies suggest that there is an association between digital use and a deleterious effect on certain variables, in particular sleep. More and more work shows that using a screen before sleeping can induce a shift in sleep cycles and interfere with falling asleep and harm the quality of sleep, particularly because of their brightness. Other studies show associations between cyberbullying and victims’ mental health disorders – more specifically in girls – including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts.

What do you think of the experts brought together to reach this consensus and of their mission?

In the scientific sense of the term, there are experts like Grégoire Borst and Jonathan Bernard who produce quality work, and others whom I do not know well. There is also a manager from a company offering parental controls, which seems very surprising to me. Especially since there is a lack of sociologists, anthropologists of digital uses as well as national education officials who must be on the front line on this issue, particularly with media and information education. The mission entrusted to them by the president reminds me of “moral panics”, when a politician takes up a social question in front of the public and delegates it to researchers who must produce simple answers on a complex subject, with a risk deviation of the work rendered.

And then there is no shortage of institutions that already produce quality reports. By establishing these commissions, which will meet three or four times, politics short-circuits reports that required months of work. We need to stop reinventing the wheel.

Emmanuel Macron mentioned possible bans. But how can we ban tools that are omnipresent in our society? Should and can we prohibit parents from putting their children in front of screens?

There is a problem with the reality principle here. Imposing regulation on families is illusory. What are we going to do ? Point the finger at them, take away their family allowances? It is not possible to ban screens. We can, on the other hand, educate and inform, thanks to programs that concern children and parents, because some are lost in the digital world and need help to identify good and bad practices.

The President also mentioned the obligation to install a parental control device on terminals (smartphones, computers, televisions and game consoles) placed on the French market. Isn’t that a good idea?

Parental controls already exist on many smartphones or computers. This can indeed be a support, but it will not be useful on its own. Controlling and regulating the practices of young people and adolescents is valid for online pornography, but for social networks, it seems more coherent to educate. Not to mention that there are many parents who do not know how to set up parental controls, hence the need to set up support programs.

What about the default installation of maximum usage time?

We can already do this on certain applications. But imagine, for example, children who have a work and support group on WhatsApp. A stupid and nasty one-hour limitation could prove counterproductive. We must first question the practices of individuals and adapt the responses to needs.

Mr. Macron also castigated, once again, “the very important role of screens” during the riots that occurred after the death of young Nahel killed by a police officer last June. “Hello generation of conspiracy theorists” if “future citizens build a distorted relationship with the truth because of social networks,” he said. Could banning social media prove beneficial?

It may be difficult to ban them among minors who are already there. Especially since they can also be tools that offer them opportunities for affirmation, sociability with peers, information, etc. Should we also set the digital majority at 15 years? Why not, but what do we do with those who are already there? Preventing them from accessing it requires establishing a form of authentication, which turns out to be very complex and not always effective, because it is easy to circumvent. Moreover, for the moment, there is no viable solution on this key aspect of the digital majority issue.

Do screens have “an impact on the emotional, sensory and emotional development of a child”, as the Head of State claims?

Studies find associations but no or minimal effects. Lorraine Poncet and Jonathan Bernard [NDLR, membre du panel d’experts], from Inserm, have for example published a study aimed at determining the impact of digital technology on drawing skills. Using data from 7,000 children from the Elfe cohort, they assessed screen time at two years old and carried out a drawing performance test at three and a half years old. Their results show that the more screen time, the worse the drawing skills. But when they took parents’ socioeconomic variables into account, they found that the negative association of screens disappeared. In other words, performance tests are much more linked to socio-economic inequalities than to screen time, which becomes more a symptom of the quality of family functioning than the direct cause of a difficulty.

This can be explained either because some parents are unable to occupy their children in other ways due to lack of available time, or because they have more difficulty protecting them from digital overconsumption due to a lack of digital culture. It is also possible that these parents have less access to certain cultural or sporting activities, for example. The impact of these socio-economic inequalities also functions to explain the negative associations between screen time and language skills or even cognitive development.

Despite these strong declarations from the president, the Attal government does not currently have a Secretary of State or Minister for Digital responsible for putting them into practice. What do you think ?

There is a real need for a minister responsible for Digital and I am surprised to see that this position is not honoured. We need a perspective that moves away from the discourse according to which digital technology is a problem, from someone who is capable of saying: there are good things and others which are harmful, we must therefore support those who try to improve the situation, particularly at the educational level, and organize collective actions to defend themselves from the predatory designs of digital platforms, which aim to maintain users as long as possible by capturing their attention, like the timelines, which allow infinite scrolling, or even algorithms which highlight negative information.

It is also the responsibility of the State to have a minister who carries a real media education project and who provides the necessary resources. It is incomprehensible to complain about conspiracies among young people, for example, without investing serious resources to combat this phenomenon. Above all, we should put socio-economic difficulties at the center of the debate, because they explain a lot of things, and not just concerning digital technology.