The successful novelist, director and associate of philosophy, Éliette Abécassis, tackles a new subject with her latest novel: social networks.

On Wednesday, she tells in the program "Culture Médias" on Europe 1 how she decided to write on Instagram when she saw her children dive into this virtual universe.

INTERVIEW

What if Instagram was a modern take on

Petit Poucet

?

Children get lost in this news feed as in a forest before being eaten by a "digital ogre" who is none other than this famous social network.

This hypothesis is put forward by Éliette Abécassis, writer, director and screenwriter, who came to present her new

Instagrammable

novel on 

Wednesday in the

Culture Médias program

on Europe 1. 

"I felt like I was losing my children"

Eliette Abécassis drew her new novel from another story.

That of

Dangerous Liaisons,

the famous work of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, appeared in 1782. "During the confinement, I was in the countryside, I had only one book at hand", she says. .

The writer explains having "readapted" in a modern version this classic of French literature.

The characters are almost the same: "The seducer, the Marquise de Merteuil, a great manipulator who is in fact the influencer, and Sasha, a somewhat naive young girl who will let herself be led by this infernal couple." 

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But this idea of ​​a novel first appeared through an observation drawn from his personal life.

"I saw my children switch overnight in Instagram and I had the feeling of losing them," says the novelist.

This is why she wanted to tell "behind the scenes, what really happens in this enchanted world of Instagram".

“Under this magnificent side of avocado toast, superb beaches on the other side of the world and great restaurants, there is a whole sales system,” explains Éliette Abécassis.

Before adding: "There is a kind of hypercapitalism that children get used to." 

"To conform to an ideal"

And then there is also this "extreme violence".

That of the conformity of the world of Instagram where all young girls are clones and where they are asked to fit into a mold.

In any case, this is what the novelist, who is also an associate of philosophy, tells in this new book.

"There is a terrible pressure on children and their image, so that they conform to the ideal of the Instagram world," she laments.

A pressure that can go as far as harassment on social networks, or even the loss of the notion of reality. 

For her, adolescents, who often spend "10 hours a day on this stream" are "victims of an addiction".

And in her book, she provides a first solution to disadvantaged parents facing this.

This is an application, which actually exists, and which allows children to control when they scroll down their screens.

It makes it possible to reduce the hours of access to the network and certain content.

For Éliette Abécassis, control is therefore a necessity.

If you don't, "it's like letting your kids roam around a bad neighborhood where there is sex and violence at 2 a.m. or any time of the night, it is not possible ", adds the novelist.

But the app has one big flaw: not all children accept digital parental controls, let alone teenagers.