Two weeks after the death of Shemseddine, a 15-year-old teenager beaten to death outside his college in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne), the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, called, Thursday, April 18, for a “general mobilization of the nation” in order to stop “the addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”. After the attack at the beginning of April on Samara, 13, by three minors aged 15 to 14 in Montpellier, or that of Philippe, 22, killed at the beginning of the week by two minors aged 14 and 15, Gabriel Attal invokes a “surge of authority”. “There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault and battery, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he listed during a speech in Viry-Châtillon, while evoking, the same evening on BFMTV, “an Islamist entryism” advocating “the precepts of sharia, particularly in schools”.
Olivier Galland, emeritus research director at the CNRS and sociologist specializing in youth, evokes a “strong trivialization of violence among young people, and an extreme tolerance of violent acts” among new generations, particularly driven by social networks and a certain “disinhibition towards political violence”. Interview.
L’Express: In his speech, Gabriel Attal spoke of “young people’s addiction to violence”. In your opinion, are the younger generations more violent today than before?
Olivier Galland: I don’t think that youth violence is really worse today than before: these acts of violence have always existed. Various anthropological works report that already in the 19th century, sometimes very violent conflicts existed between neighboring villages over young girls courted by opposing gangs or because of old neighborhood quarrels. At the same time, well-documented work such as that of Steven Pinker in his work The part of the angel in us (2011) describe an era which, contrary to what we would tend to think, is less and less violent. Despite this secular decline in violence, there can however be upheavals, and certain social contexts lead to an increase in violence. What we can observe in recent events is, in my opinion, not a renewal of violence itself, but a rejuvenation of the perpetrators of violence, sometimes aged 13 or 14 years old. The ambient feeling of hyperviolence mainly comes from there.
This phenomenon is particularly linked to the new autonomy available to adolescents, even pre-adolescents: in the 1950s and 1960s, 13-14 year olds were still considered children, who lived under the control of their parents, and had a very low autonomy. Their personal lives were controlled by the family, if only because they could only contact their friends via the family phone, often could not leave the house without their parents’ permission, and their extracurricular associations were limited to those of the family circle. The arrival of mobile phones at increasingly younger ages, and of course, social networks has played a fundamental role in the autonomy of the youngest, including in their access – or participation – in violent acts. They are not, in my opinion, at the origin of the violence, but have contributed to spreading it and accelerating it… to the point of trivializing it.
What do you mean by the “trivialization” of this violence?
There is already a certain disinhibition towards political violence. The Yellow Vest movement and its spread on social networks have, for me, played a role in disinhibiting the use of violence to express ideas, refusal, revolt. In the investigation A plural youth, that we conducted with Marc Lazar for the Montaigne Institute on 8,000 young people in 2021, we were very surprised by the level of tolerance towards this political violence among young people.
““There is a very strong distrust of authority””
Thus, 49% of 18-24 year olds found it acceptable or understandable to confront elected officials to protest, 47% to insult the President of the Republic, 40% to confront the police, 37% to force entry into a ministry, etc. This is linked to the very strong discredit of the political system among young people, since almost 70% of respondents in the survey thought, for example, that politicians were corrupt. This political violence has a very strong link with general violence, expressed in the public space: there is a form of acculturation to violence which is spreading in our society – including among young people – with a very strong distrust towards -towards authority, institutions, the police.
What do you think are the triggers for these violent acts among young people?
First of all, there is a fairly high tolerance among certain young people towards deviant acts, which did not exist before. For example with regard to drugs: in certain neighborhoods, where institutions have great difficulty maintaining order, a parallel economy has developed through drug trafficking. We see the development and acceptance of a deviant culture, that is to say, we legitimize extralegal means to satisfy classic consumer needs, we justify acts of violence against the police, we tolerate and we trivialize those regularly perpetrated in public spaces – here again, we see an acculturation to violence.
At the same time, social networks allow young people to put themselves out there, which can generate negative counter-effects via online harassment for example, which can lead to physical violence in “real” life. These networks in fact contribute to creating cognitive bubbles, to linking people who share exactly the same opinions, without ever being confronted with contradictory ideas, which can generate radicalism, via conspiratorial ideas for example, identity and political values. , religious, sometimes completely irrational, which can become vectors of confrontation.
“Social networks sometimes play a very important propaganda role”
As Gabriel Attal pointed out, we are witnessing, for example, among certain young people a strong rise in religiosity, in particular radical Islam, which contradicts the liberal values of democratic societies, on the role of women or tolerance. with regard to certain sexual orientations for example. It is a factor of tension which can lead to very violent acts, even more so if it is reinforced by social networks, which sometimes play a very important propaganda role.
Finally, there is an aspect of mimicry, as we saw in the urban violence of last summer: medium-sized towns or neighborhoods which had absolutely not experienced such violence in 2005 were confronted with riots, since the violence was spread and accelerated by social networks.
To stop this violence, Gabriel Attal proposed, on April 18, to “make resigning parents responsible, so that they have to answer for the actions of their children”. What do you think ?
I don’t think this is a very effective measure: very often, parents are completely overwhelmed, and have little to do with the increase in violence among their children. When we investigated in Aulnay-sous-Bois after the riots of 2005, an expression was widespread among young people, and still exists today: “We were set up by others”, in the sense of ” train”. Faced with this strength of the group, the role of parents is very weak. We realized that the group of young people is extremely autonomous.
“Very often, parents are completely overwhelmed”
I don’t think punishing parents is a real solution, nor that it can have a real impact. I rather think that we must go through school, it is up to education to take over – which is not easily accepted in French culture, which considers rather that families must educate, and school provide knowledge. We must emphasize the role of moral and civic education courses, train young people in critical thinking, train them in the use of digital networks… And make them participate in debate at school, much more than currently , where we observe a very formal, vertical education system, with very passive students.
.