Screens and young people: why we need to take action

In early 2024, Emmanuel Mac­ron con­vened a com­mis­sion of experts on the effects of screens on young people’s health. After more than three months’ work, the com­mis­sion noted the pre­dom­in­ant – and some­times unin­ten­tion­al – use of screens by young people, with poten­tially harm­ful con­sequences. In its report¹, the com­mis­sion pro­poses a com­pre­hens­ive action plan to help young people to bet­ter live with these tools that have become an essen­tial part of their lives.

One of our tasks was to build a sci­entif­ic con­sensus on the impact of screens on young people’s health. We also had to assess the effect­ive­ness of exist­ing meas­ures and put for­ward ideas for future action. Our aim was to put the child back at the heart of the pro­cess and to pro­pose a sys­tem­ic action plan. The reas­on why no dir­ect­ive had been drawn up until now was pre­cisely because we could­n’t be sat­is­fied with a single-sec­tor solution.

Our com­mit­tee was made up of ten experts, includ­ing Ser­vane Mouton, a neur­o­lo­gist, and Amine Benyam­ina, an addic­tion psy­chi­at­rist, who co-chaired it. We had extremely var­ied back­grounds and, through our exper­i­ences, dif­fer­ent opin­ions on the sub­ject, which is why we were keen to find and put in place some­thing we could all agree on.

We con­duc­ted a large num­ber of hear­ings with 180 experts. By pool­ing our work, we were able to draw up a num­ber of con­clu­sions and identi­fy aven­ues for reflec­tion. We were also keen to include the views of young people, which is why we also organ­ised work­shops to gath­er their testi­mon­ies and opin­ions, exchange ideas and get them to react to our areas of work. Spe­cial­ist organ­isers with exper­i­ence of this kind of exer­cise were called in.

We put togeth­er a pan­el with as much diversity as pos­sible in the time avail­able. As a res­ult, 150 chil­dren were inter­viewed. This provided us with valu­able input for our dis­cus­sions. We were reas­sured by some things and sur­prised by oth­ers. In all cases, the pan­el high­lighted cer­tain crit­ic­al aspects. We then had to digest this inform­a­tion and draw up guidelines, which we set out in detail in our report.

What struck us most was the phe­nomen­on of “techno-con­fer­en­cing” for chil­dren aged between 0 and 3. In their early years, if they are to devel­op, they need inter­ac­tion and spe­cial moments with their par­ents. This involves ges­tures, words, listen­ing and look­ing. Put­ting a screen between par­ent and child inter­feres with the cre­ation of this cru­cial bond, without us neces­sar­ily being aware of it. We did­n’t real­ise how crit­ic­al this is in today’s society.

Secondly, the arrival of mobile screens has led to new modes of con­sump­tion that raise oth­er issues: sit­ting with their screen on their lap, users are exposed to a source of light from below. Ini­tial res­ults show that, in this con­fig­ur­a­tion, blue light is par­tic­u­larly harm­ful to eye­sight. Depend­ing on usage, excess­ive use can lead to myopia (the eye being less exposed to nat­ur­al light and less accus­tomed to look­ing at the hori­zon), dis­rupt sleep and con­trib­ute to a more gen­er­al sedent­ary life­style, which has an impact on phys­ic­al capa­city. Phys­ic­al capa­city has fallen by 30% since the 1990s.

The aim of this obser­va­tion is not to get rid of screens, but to think about when to use them and how; to learn to con­trol their use so as to retain the bene­fits. We can adopt a health­i­er life­style to min­im­ise the impact on eye­sight, sleep and activ­ity, but we can also turn to altern­at­ives that need to be sup­por­ted and made visible.

We need to re-estab­lish spaces out­side the home for young people. We’ve built soci­et­ies where we can­’t stand chil­dren mak­ing noise or run­ning around in the street. Or, as par­ents, we are afraid and we ask our chil­dren to stay at home. But we’ve seen how import­ant it is to get out­doors and be phys­ic­ally active.

To address the prob­lem of excess­ive use of screens, we need to ask ourselves why we use them, but also what young people are look­ing for in them. When we reach adoles­cence, prob­lems of iden­ti­fic­a­tion emerge, a need to fit in with a group. Social net­works respond to this need to social­ise. But when con­fron­ted with eco­nom­ic mod­els designed to cap­ture our atten­tion, we quickly become cap­tives, trapped in bubbles. Sim­il­arly, if we have ques­tions about our love life, our sexu­al­ity, our body or our dis­com­fort… Who can we turn to? Where can you find sup­port and answers? If you don’t know, you go online. If you’re not warned, you run the risk of com­ing across con­tent that is shock­ing, viol­ent or even dangerous.

The work­shops gave us a real insight into the daily lives of teen­agers, their expos­ure to screens and the ways in which they use them. We dis­covered that they are nav­ig­at­ing a world that can become an abso­lute jungle if they are not pre­pared for it, or if they are not accom­pan­ied: shock­ing con­tent, har­ass­ment, sex­tor­tion [Edit­or­’s note: extor­tion of sexu­al favours via the inter­net], deep­fakes [Edit­or­’s note: mis­lead­ing images and videos gen­er­ated using AI], sexu­al pred­at­ors… Girls and boys are equally affected, and the most vul­ner­able can find them­selves con­fron­ted with dan­ger­ous con­tent very quickly. The most strik­ing thing about the young people’s testi­mon­ies is the way in which they can eas­ily come across shock­ing con­tent and accept it with a kind of resig­na­tion, which is reflec­ted in the way they tend to trivi­al­ise it when they talk about it. How­ever, they all told us that they wanted to be pro­tec­ted from such con­tent, while at the same time seek­ing to main­tain this link with know­ledge and others.

The most strik­ing thing about the young people’s testi­mon­ies is the way in which they can eas­ily come across shock­ing con­tent and accept it with a, kind of, resignation.

These risks are part of the first line of action we are recom­mend­ing: pro­tec­tion and reg­u­la­tion. This also involves identi­fy­ing dark pat­terns [Edit­or­’s note: inter­faces designed to mis­lead users], rab­bit holes [Edit­or­’s note: mech­an­isms designed to keep users on a plat­form as long as pos­sible] and bubble sys­tems in which users can find them­selves trapped. It’s also about denoun­cing busi­ness mod­els that cap­ture short atten­tion spans and exploit human bias to get more and more view­ing time.

We iden­ti­fied that it is abso­lutely essen­tial to reg­u­late the plat­forms and make them account­able, espe­cially the big play­ers. But we also need to edu­cate and sup­port young people in becom­ing autonom­ous in their digit­al lives. We can­’t pre­vent everything – and that’s prob­ably not the solu­tion – so we need to edu­cate. This means passing on the rules, codes and chal­lenges of the digit­al world, but also pre­par­ing chil­dren for future devel­op­ments by giv­ing them the keys, the bench­marks and the means to exer­cise their own crit­ic­al think­ing and rise to the chal­lenges of the future.

Digit­al edu­ca­tion must be a step-by-step pro­cess, and school is a safe, super­vised place to learn how to mas­ter this tool. As I said earli­er, the best way to pro­tect is to inform. This means under­stand­ing the impact on health and the body’s need to adopt a healthy life­style, but also under­stand­ing the con­tent and the inten­tions of those who are offer­ing it to us.

This learn­ing pro­cess involves rais­ing aware­ness among edu­ca­tion and health pro­fes­sion­als, as well as par­ents. In a world where digit­al tech­no­logy is every­where, we all need to real­ise that these objects and their con­tent are not harm­less, and that at every age we need to adapt our sup­port, but also pro­pose and pro­mote alternatives.

In our work, we have been keen to put for­ward com­ple­ment­ary pro­pos­als and to work towards a coher­ent sys­tem­ic response to these issues, which affect all areas of our soci­ety (health, fam­ily, edu­ca­tion, eco­nomy, etc.). This means more than just ban­ning mobile phones from schools, as the media cov­er­age might suggest.

We have delivered and presen­ted our report to the Pres­id­ent of the Repub­lic and the Prime Min­is­ter, as well as to the depart­ments most closely involved, i.e. Digit­al, Edu­ca­tion, Fam­ily and Health. The object­ive will then be to find out how each of them will take it on board and pro­pose actions. With the polit­ic­al ups and downs of the sum­mer, we’ve only just begun to meet the new gov­ern­ment play­ers, but our work has been circulated.

Our sup­port con­tin­ues: we are respond­ing to requests to explain and see how we can imple­ment some of the actions we have pro­posed. We talk to elec­ted rep­res­ent­at­ives and people with struc­tures in place to make pro­gress on the issue. Digit­al tech­no­logy can be bene­fi­cial, if not indis­pens­able, just like the tools we use to help dys­prax­ic chil­dren learn. It’s import­ant to know how to mas­ter it so that we can con­tin­ue to bene­fit from it and grasp the chal­lenges of its devel­op­ment. It’s import­ant to provide this kind of understanding.

Interview by Mikaël Mayorgas