SIf my youngest son has battles (mainly organized based on Playmobil), my eldest son now has fights. After fighting for us to allow him to play the video game Fortnite (which led to the drafting of a contractual charter whose terms are never really respected), he tackled, on the strength of his previous victory, a new major file: obtaining a telephone portable. Entering college was the trigger for this nascent desire, which quickly became self-proclaimed evidence as September approached: back to school = unlimited access to mobile telephony.
For those who have never been confronted with this type of all-consuming aspiration, it is difficult to imagine the kind of dilemma it can generate in the mind of the parent, who finds himself torn between two extreme visions of the future under digital influence. .
On one side is the image of her little baby bird leaving the nest in the morning mist and heading to college alone, a potential target for wandering pedophiles and malicious bumpers; in this specific case, the mobile phone will be used to reassure the adult, who can contact his child to find out where (and in what condition) he is.
At the other end of the spectrum points to the distressing scenario of a child perpetually anchored to his screen, which makes the parent fearful of participating in “the factory of the digital moron”, to use the title of a famous book by Michel Desmurget. In this book, published in 2019 at Seuil, the neuroscientist estimated at 1,700 hours for a schoolboy and 2,400 hours for a college student the time spent each year in front of screens. Let’s be clear, these figures are not pointing towards a decline. According a study conducted by Ipsos, the Parenthood Observatory and the National Union of Family Associations, 53% of children have increased their screen consumption since the pandemic.
A “not smart” phone
Among the media whose use has increased the most since 2019 are the tablet (+ 23%) and, unsurprisingly, the smartphone (+ 11%), which would be owned by 46% of 6-10 year olds, according to a Toluna-Harris Interactive study for E-Childhood.
“Regarding screens for recreational usewrites Michel Desmurget, research sheds light on a long list of deleterious influences in both children and adolescents. All the pillars of development are affected, from the somatic, namely the body (with effects, for example, on obesity or cardiovascular maturation), to the emotional (for example, aggression or depression), via the cognitive, in other words the intellectual (for example, language or concentration); so many attacks which, certainly, do not leave school success unscathed. »
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