Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital Transition and Electronic Communications and Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State for Children and Families.

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Nicolas Messyasz

  • The Secretaries of State for digital Cédric O, and for child protection Adrien Taquet, gave an interview to "20 Minutes".

    On the occasion of SafeR Internet Day, they are announcing the launch of a platform to fight against children's exposure to online pornography.

  • “More and more young people are confronted with porn.

    Today, more than one in three children has seen pornographic content before the age of 12, and two thirds consider that it shocked them, ”explains Adrien Taquet.

  • "The platform launched Tuesday will be a unique place where parents can benefit from advice and concrete tools to set up parental controls and tackle this subject without taboos with their children," detail Cédric O and Adrien Taquet.

It is one of the priority projects of the five-year term of the President of the Republic.

The exposure of young people to online pornography has been on the rise in recent years.

“In our country, we access pornography around the age of 13.

The imagination and the sexuality of young people are built by the brutality of these images.

We must protect them in the face of this content ”, declared Emmanuel Macron during his speech to Unesco in 2019.

On the occasion of SafeR Internet Day, which will take place this Tuesday, February 9, Cédric O, the Secretary of State for Digital Transition and Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State for Children, are launching a campaign aimed at challenge parents on the dangers of exposing children to pornography.

A platform dedicated to parents, www.jeprotegemonenfant.gouv.fr, which informs, advises and supports the implementation of parental control, will also be launched on Tuesday.

20 Minutes

questioned the two Secretaries of State, who today wish to "do everything possible" to protect minors against online pornography.

The exposure of young people to pornography is, according to you, "a real scourge" in our society ...

Adrien Taquet 

: More and more young people are confronted with pornography.

Today, more than one in three children have seen pornographic material before the age of 12, and two-thirds consider it shocked.

There is also a disconnect between parents' perceptions - only 7% of them think their child has seen porn.

Being exposed to this type of content too young is a form of violence, it shapes representations in a child, in his relationship to others, in the creation of his sexual identity, and in the nature of relationships based on male domination. .

And then it contributed to a trivialization of sexuality, and to a form of hyper-sexualization of society.

Cédric O 

: The question of better regulation of digital spaces is a very important subject for the government.

We are taking emergency measures: this is particularly the case with online hatred as part of the bill reinforcing respect for the principles of the Republic, which introduces obligations of moderation by social networks.

But it is a long-term job, because the best protection against the "black face" of the Internet is training, education and awareness.

This is true for online hate, fake news, and the protection of children.

On this subject, we need to help parents play their role to better protect their children by giving them tools.

What does the platform you launch this Tuesday for SafeR Internet Day consist of?

AT

 : It's a portal that aggregates all of the e-parenting support content.

Today focused on the issue of pornography, it could concern other content tomorrow (on cyberbullying for example).

It is a unique place where parents can benefit from advice and concrete tools to set up parental controls and to discuss this subject without taboos with their children.

An awareness-raising spot intended for parents, and raising awareness of the reality of the phenomenon, will be broadcast from Monday on social networks and the main replays sites (TF1, M6, France Télévisions) to officially launch this platform.

In February 2020, you had both drawn up a commitment protocol against the exposure of minors to pornography intended for all Internet players

.

Where is this device today?

AT

 : The main social networks, Internet providers, search engines, e-parenting associations have signed this protocol.

Some porn sites have also signed it, such as Dorcel through their association "Le Geste".

The goal was to set up an integrated parental control solution to protect minors.

Parental control is unknown and under-used: one in three French people do not know it.

Today we must facilitate its use.

So you bet on parental controls.

But other avenues have been mentioned to limit access to porn for young people, such as setting up a system with France Connect, or verifying age via the bank imprint ...

CO 

: These are not solutions to solve the problem.

It would just have shifted the audience to other sites based abroad and even less controlled.

The challenge is to be effective on a subject on which no one in the world today has found a solution.

As with the fight against fake news, what is needed is better education and training.

We assume in any case to put on the table all the means for this.

What do you think of the law passed in Great Britain to prohibit the access of minors to porn sites?

CO

 : We cannot say that the English model, like the initiative taken by Italy [the ban on TikTok for children under 15 years of age] are to date successful.

Tens of thousands of sites should be banned, and the ways around the controls are pretty straightforward.

With this approach, there is a risk of burnout running behind the problem.

It is for this reason that we want to focus on the channels [search engines, internet provider] and devices that children use, educating parents about tools such as parental controls.

In France, the law against domestic violence adopted last summer, allows the CSA to block porn sites accessible to minors.

Is it applied today?

AT

 : After awareness-raising and prevention, the other part of our policy indeed relates to the accountability of publishers of pornographic sites.

This has given rise to legislative translations, with the reaffirmation in law since July 2020 [law against domestic violence] that a simple disclaimer is not sufficient to protect minors.

And we have created mechanisms to force sites to comply with this obligation.

CO

 : The CSA was also approached last November by associations to order a dozen pornographic sites to comply with the law.

If the CSA responds to this request, the sites would then have fifteen days to execute and at the end of this period, the CSA could if necessary seize the president of the judicial tribunal of Paris to order the blocking of the sites.

Cédric O and Adrien Taquet.

- Nicolas Messyasz

President

Emmanuel

Macron had nevertheless committed, during his speech to Unesco in November 2019, to impose automatic parental control by default on all Internet players, under penalty of "passing a law".

Today we are still quite far from the mark ...

A. T

.

: You are right.

But since then, two or three things have happened ... We are now working to move this subject forward despite the Covid-19.

Working groups have met regularly to collectively move forward on this subject. A barometer to measure the number of parental control downloads on different media has also been set up to measure the development of these systems.

The exposure of minors to pornography is a real cause of concern for the President of the Republic, and that is why he asked us to take more proactive action.

C. O

 : Yes, we cannot ignore what has happened over the past year and a half.

I am thinking of Covid-19, which made us waste time, but also of the censorship of the Avia law [online hatred] by the Constitutional Council.

Nevertheless, we continue to move forward ... There is also the Digital Services Act which is under discussion at European level, the objective of which is precisely to better regulate content on the Internet.

We wish to bring the subject of the protection of minors into this context.

Notably because the subject of parental control by default is contiguous to European regulations.

If we want to be efficient and impose things on the big players, we need to do it at European level.

As with GDPR and online hate.

So there will be no specific law in France?

AT

 : That's not what they say.

We bet on trust with the players, with the aim of mobilizing them.

And as I told you, a barometer and a survey of parents will measure the usefulness of this platform in a few months.

This is the first time that we have data on the subject and that we have managed to bring together all the players to work on a common approach.

CO 

: We cannot pretend that there is no European text on the table today, which legally and politically preempts a certain number of discussions that we can have.

We wish to leverage this regulatory text for Internet content, as we are doing today with certain essential provisions of the Avia law which inspired the

Digital Services Act

and which we are in the process of reflecting in the reinforcing bill. republican principles.

The confinement periods have exacerbated these problems.

Young people have consumed more porn, and we have also witnessed the explosion of ficha accounts (

revenge porn

), but also the rise of the Onlyfans platform which is nicknamed "the Instagram of porn" ...

AT

 : According to figures from the e-Enfance association, online harassment, and revenge porn, increased sharply during confinement.

Today, 12/13 year old girls do not hesitate to send photos of their breasts on Snapchat, because they are not aware of the risk of sending

nudes

.

The whole issue of the platform that we are setting up is to provide the best possible support to disadvantaged parents in the face of these practices.

CO 

: A lot of young people post naked content on social networks.

What can be done to prevent this, other than doing prevention and awareness?

We are not going to put a cookie in every cell phone, and pour into a surveillance company.

It is impossible to solve all the problems by a purely technical approach.

The legal basis on which we regulate the Internet today dates from the year 2000. Hence the urgent need to update our legal framework today on hate content online, on disinformation and on pornographic content.

More generally, with online courses, young people have consumed more screens.

How can they be made aware of the dangers of overexposure?

AT

 : Beyond the issues raised by the too easy access of the youngest to pornography, there is a whole subject on e-parenting.

Last year, for Safer Internet Day, we went with Cédric O to 8-10 year old classes in Bobigny.

These children were obviously all very comfortable with these tools.

These generations of digital natives are above all digital naive because they do not imagine the dangers of digital ...

CO

 : With Adrien Taquet, we participated in a dinner with scientists and practitioners specializing in the issue of screens in children.

There is a consensus on the fact that beyond a certain age, the problem is not the screen itself, but how it is used.

We must be careful not to overwhelm technology with all the evils.

During confinement, we needed digital technology to work, study, and take care of ourselves.

This will continue and we will move towards more screens.

The bottom line is knowing how to master these screens.

By the Web

Cyber-harassment, revenge porn, insults ... Online violence against minors jumped 57% in 2020

Society

A third of 18-30 year olds have been exposed to porn by the age of 12

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