Keep the youngest away from social networks by making their parents more responsible.
This is what the French National Assembly wants, which voted, Thursday, March 2, the obligation for social platforms like TikTok or Snapchat to systematically check the agreement of parents for the registration of children under 15.
The text, adopted almost unanimously by the deputies (82 votes against 2) at first reading, must still be examined in the Senate.
It displays real ambition and is one of the first links in a series of initiatives aimed at regulating the digital uses of children and adolescents.
An amendment notably added a constraint by providing that parents could not give their consent for children under 13, except for "platforms labeled" by the State.
Which means that children below this age would simply not have access to social networks.
Rejecting any "moralizing discourse", the rapporteur of the bill, Laurent Marcangeli (Horizons MP for South Corsica), defended "essential safeguards" to be put in the face of "the increasing precocity of digital puberty and power of the tools made available to our young people".
Indeed, according to data from the National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil),
the first registration on social networks occurs "on average around eight and a half years old, and more than half of 10-14 year olds are present there".
"We would never leave an eight-year-old child in the middle of Paris, at night. A parent would never do that", assures France 24 Caroline Rouen-Mallet, lecturer in social marketing at the University of Rouen Normandy.
"However, we leave them the phone in the room at night. However, having this access to the phone is like Paris at night: you can have bad encounters, see ultra shocking images, be verbally attacked..." , she lists, insisting on the need to draw the attention of parents to the importance of protecting their children in the digital field.
The bill brought by the Corsican deputy is therefore, as he explains in a column published by the JDD at the end of February, "an opportunity to reaffirm a simple principle: the rules of the real world are intended to apply in the digital world, which cannot be an area of lawlessness".
✅ Bill adopted!
Thank you to the deputies of all persuasions for these constructive exchanges, which have made it possible to enrich the text.
#DigitalMajority #DirectAN https://t.co/lTPAFAvTNp
— Laurent Marcangeli (@LMarcangeli) March 2, 2023
France at the forefront?
To remedy this scourge, the text aims to establish the obligation for social networks "to put in place a technical solution for verifying the age of end users and the consent of holders of parental authority" for the least 15 years old, which must be certified by the authorities.
A concept introduced in France in 2018 in application of European legislation but never really applied.
In the event of a violation, a sanction is provided for, with a fine of up to 1% of the company's worldwide turnover.
To fully understand the amounts in question: Snapchat's turnover in 2022 amounted to 4.6 billion dollars.
But let it be said: from the point of view of the platforms targeted, it is not guaranteed that the game will be played every time.
“It is up to the platforms to make proposals, they are responsible”, explains Philippe Coen, lawyer and founder of the NGO Respect Zone, who recalls the difficulties that such a measure can pose in the technical field.
Be that as it may, the most important thing for the French legislator is above all to create dialogue within families.
"There will be the family obligation to have a debate," adds the lawyer.
The government, which supports all these initiatives, wants to be active on these subjects.
He recently launched a campaign "to raise awareness among parents and to popularize the jeprotegemonenfant.gouv.fr site", recalled the Secretary of State for Child Protection, Charlotte Caubel.
And “France will soon be the first country in the world to generalize parental control by default on all devices sold on its territory”, underlined, for his part, the Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition, Jean-Noël Barrot.
06:46
As for the proposal of the deputy Marcangeli, "it is the first time in world law that parents are invited to weigh in on a registration on a social network", welcomes Philippe Coen.
However, elsewhere also the question of the minimum age of activity on social networks is debated.
Across the United States, a growing number of policymakers and federal officials are seeking to keep children and young teens away from social platforms, citing growing concerns that it could harm their well-being and mental health.
This stance recently gained traction after U.S. Public Health Administrator Vivek Murthy
told CNN he thinks 13 is "too early" for kids to join apps like Instagram and TikTok, which he says can create a "distorted environment" that "often makes a bad service" to children.
Control screen time, but also access to content
In an article published in The Conversation, at the end of February, Caroline Rouen-Mallet evokes recent statistics according to which college students spend more time on screens than on college benches every day.
The question of screen time is unavoidable, of course.
But if TikTok has just announced the establishment of a quantity surveyor to limit its access to one hour per day for those under 18, this does not protect them in any way from the content they are confronted with daily.
On Twitter, the youngest can have access to pornographic content without their age being checked, on TikTok dangerous challenges regularly circulate, pushing children to adopt reckless behavior, on Instagram there are a number of publications disseminating beauty standards unreachable...
Psychological consequences
"This consumption which, at the start, is made for entertainment purposes, ends up leaving traces from a neurological and psychological point of view", deplores Caroline Rouen-Mallet, referring more particularly to the new standards disseminated through the content of these platforms.
The researcher, who works in particular on the impact of digital consumption on the behavior of children and adolescents, relates, for example, a worrying evolution in the eating habits of adolescent girls.
"By dint of seeing very stereotypical bodies all day long, it injects standards that are very difficult to achieve in their heads (because they are mostly retouched photos)".
By wanting at all costs to reach these standards, young people then adopt deviant, dangerous practices, or new diets, continues the specialist.
"This phenomenon is even stronger when the child is younger, because from a cognitive point of view, he is in full development and needs models to identify with".
However, this is where the danger lies: if there is no critical eye cast by an adult on what the child sees, the latter then considers what he sees as the truth.
Match the Smartphone with its user manual
It is on this point that the deputies want to maneuver.
"We will be able to put the parents back in the middle of the chessboard," says Philippe Coen.
Although the applications of this law are still vague for many, its principle is not without reaping the consent of the French.
According to an Ifop poll, the results of which were published on March 1, 77% of them support Laurent Marcangeli's bill on the regulation of young people's access to social networks.
"Including parents with children aged 13 to 15 who are currently registered on a social network (75%)," the report said.
For Caroline Rouen-Mallet, this bill must indeed be the starting point for real support for parents in digital territory.
"Parents offer the Smartphone, but do not deliver the instructions that go with it", she regrets.
The child's phone then becomes "a sacred object, a private territory" that the parent does not allow himself to explore.
On March 6, the Bourbon Palace will go even further.
MEPs will examine a text by Macronist MP Caroline Janvier aimed at preventing the risks for the youngest children of excessive exposure to screens.
A bill from Renaissance MP Bruno Studer will also be on the menu, aiming to "guarantee respect for children's image rights", including in the face of certain parents broadcasting images of their children on the Internet without limit.
Indeed, according to a Microsoft study, published in 2019, four out of ten teenagers find that their parents have exposed them too much on the networks.
"Perhaps the current generation of young parents - more expert in these subjects because having grown up with these networks - will better know how to put in place protective mechanisms for their own children", asks Caroline Rouen-Mallet.
However, the question of setting an example also remains at the heart of the matter.
"When a parent spends his time on his screen, at the table or in other moments of family life, how can he encourage his child to consume less screen?", questions the researcher again.
Just like the glass of wine to which the parent is entitled and of which the child is deprived, the parent has rights that the child does not have, she recalls.
"Obviously you have to mark the difference between the adult world and the world of childhood, and that each consumption is adapted to each age group", she says.
"But for that, we need discussions, communication, and the establishment - at home but also at school - of a real digital education".
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