Their report, commissioned in January, was due in mid-April. It will ultimately be a few weeks late. “We are still working on it, we are still conducting hearings,” says Grégoire Borst, professor of developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience and laboratory director at the CNRS, one of the 12 members of the commission, in an interview with L’Express. screens” named by Emmanuel Macron at the start of the year. The latter must propose solutions to the executive to limit the excessive exposure of young people to screens, such as phones, tablets and television, which could be harmful to their cognitive development. Recent news fuels this reflection, such as the “digital break” for middle school students mentioned by the Minister of National Education, Nicole Belloubet, or the bill aimed at prohibiting the use of screens among early childhood professionals, tabled by two Republican deputies. Can these ideas be the beginning of an answer to the problem? Interview.
L’Express: Is there a miracle solution to limit the screen time of young people? The proposals are multiplying in all directions, from nursery to college…
Grégoire Borst: Awareness-raising measures are going in the right direction. This, it seems to me, is the spirit of the proposed law focusing on early childhood professionals. This is so that they understand, particularly because of potential “technoference” effects, that they must be careful not to use a cell phone themselves when interacting with a child under 3 years old. It’s important, because, in the early stages of building language, of recognizing emotions, we need to look at ourselves. This is therefore consistent with some of the mechanisms that could produce the deleterious effects of screens observed on very young children. Among teenagers, who are more likely to use personal screens, it is, however, a little more complicated. If we want to reduce their screen time, we must above all offer them alternatives. Other fun cultural content. And, more broadly, a space in our public sphere. Because, fundamentally, cities are not designed for them. Due to a certain social pressure, they are mainly expected to make as little noise as possible.
We are far, therefore, from Chinese radicalism, for example, which categorically prohibits telephone screens after specific times: two hours maximum between 16 and 17 years old…
This is another of our problems: that of acceptability. If our proposals within the committee are unacceptable to the majority of the population, they will not be of much use. Let us also remember that we live in a democracy, in which there are individual freedoms and rights. Nothing comparable, in my opinion, with the Chinese context.
Are your tracks likely to be somewhat disappointing in the eyes of the general public?
As you asked me, there is probably no miracle solution. Our approach must be systemic. We must use all levers, find a point of balance between individual responsibility, but also collective responsibility, that of adults among others who spend a lot of time on their screens, which interferes with their interactions with their children. Also think about education, about parenting in a difficult world, particularly due to digital technology, but also about other factors, such as inequalities. Will regulating screens be likely to reduce or increase them? Finally, there is a responsibility of the platforms to question. When trying to protect children and adolescents, it is not at all acceptable to observe dark patterns [NDLR : des interfaces exploitant les biais cognitifs des utilisateurs, afin de leur faire accomplir des actions non désirées]options and algorithms developed to play on the flaws in our attentional systems, automatic launches of videos on YouTube or Netflix… But all these major digital players are neither French nor even European.
Your last remark also raises the question of the difference between screen time and content watched. Are the two different?
Taking overall hours spent in front of screens is relevant to measuring the time it takes away from other activities. Otherwise, it is indeed very limiting. Not all uses of screens have the same effects. If we take the attentional dimension, video games – for certain types, such as action games – can have potentially positive effects on adolescents. The same goes for more social and relational skills, with a title like The Sims. There is also data which shows that when working on empathic responses and tolerance of difference, virtual reality devices putting for example in the shoes of a migrant, make it possible to develop empathy for this population. rather stigmatized in our society. Research carried out in the Clermont academy finally showed that the use of digital devices for learning science could once again have positive externalities, particularly for students who came from less advantaged social backgrounds. These remain weak effects, like all other educational measures. But social networks have no effect at all, or over the long term – according to research which is starting to emerge on certain cohorts in the United States – have more negative consequences on the development of attentional capacities. users.
However, there is not yet a very clear scientific consensus on the negative impact of screens on the development of a child or adolescent. For what ?
What we need today – but it is complicated because it is very expensive – are cohort studies, that is to say longitudinal studies in which people are followed over a relatively long time, in order to to look at what exposure to different types of content produces. The important thing is not to achieve them at a given age, but to be interested in the very dynamics of development, for example language, of intentional systems in the human brain or even of the cerebral. There are two constraints to this effort currently. The first is time and the second is money, especially if you’re looking to combine behavioral data and neuroimaging data. And then, finally, it would be necessary to be able to cross-reference this information with statistics on actual use of content. What the big platforms are supposed to provide us today, but which they don’t do. We therefore have very little reliable data on this subject. However, we know that brain development in adolescents can sometimes lead to depressive symptoms, and it seems that these symptoms can partly explain excessive use of social networks. And aggravate this initial vulnerability factor. However, we cannot currently say that it is social networks that trigger depressive symptoms. In summary, all these complex relationships still require clarification through cohorts.
However, there seems to be an urgency to react. A recent study from the National Book Center, widely reported, highlighted the explosion of screen time compared to reading a paper book. Does this worry you?
I’m a little wary of this type of survey, the methodology of which I don’t know. First of all, we should not assume that there is no reading time when we are on screens, even on a social network like Instagram, where we still read text. In the image, when we are exchanging messages, we also write and read. We cannot therefore completely contrast screen time and reading time. Uses are changing, undeniably. However, beware of very normative visions, which would like reading to be only great French literature. Studies have established that during the Covid crisis, younger people certainly used their screens more, but they also read a lot of manga.
We often hear that screens “dumb” or make teenagers “more stupid”. Is this a common place?
For IQ [quotient intellectuel], a type of measurement of intelligence, we have what is called the “Flynn effect”. This states that from one generation to another, IQ increases. Recently, some have claimed that its effects are stagnating or even diminishing. But serious studies say, on the contrary, that the Flynn effect is still very palpable. So, certainly, teenagers are spending more time on their screens, and this can have an impact on cognitive and socio-emotional dimensions – according to data that is still difficult to determine – but there is no collapse in IQ . This is a bias: the figures do not show that screens make our children stupid.
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