Romain Rouillard 18:21 pm, March 24, 2023

In a tweet published on Friday, Charlotte Caubel, Secretary of State for Children, hypothesized to deprive children of the Chinese social network TikTok. In the morning, the government indicated that the application was now banned on the professional phones of French civil servants.

TikTok, decidedly in the eye of the storm. The Chinese social network, which some describe as a spying tool for China, has just been banned from the professional mobile phones of all French state officials. A measure supported by Stanislas Guérini, Minister of Transformation and Public Service, welcomed by his colleague Charlotte Caubel. On Twitter, the Secretary of State for Children even suggested "extending this ban to children".

I welcome @StanGuerini's decision to ban certain apps, including TikTok, from the phones of government officials. Tomorrow, we will have to ask ourselves about extending this ban to children.

— Charlotte Caubel (@CharlotteCaubel) March 24, 2023

"Addictive algorithms, incitement to self-harm, overexposure to screens, inappropriate content, risks to personal data, cyberbullying, misinformation... The risks are many for children," she continued in response to her first tweet. Last September, a study conducted by the company NewsGuard warned of a worrying level of "misinformation" on the platform popular with teenagers. In particular, it showed that 20% of the videos obtained, via research on various current topics ranging from the war in Ukraine to the health crisis, were simply false or misleading.

Sometimes dangerous challenges

In December, it was Irène Cristofori, neuroscientist at the CNRS, who sounded the alarm in the columns of Le Parisien. "The prefrontal cortex, at the front of the brain, develops later, with full maturation in late adolescence. The unlimited use of TikTok disrupts a system being acquired with very negative and dramatic effects in the long term (...) Social networks, unlike a movie or manga, have no end. The child will find it difficult to set limits," she said.

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The Chinese social network is also the scene of many crazy challenges that teenagers throw at each other. And which can be dangerous for some. In the UK, a young boy named Archie died last summer at the age of 12 after participating in the Blackout Challenge on TikTok. The goal of the game was to hold your breath as long as possible. Found lifeless and then placed in a coma, young Archie did not survive. More recently, last February, there was a trend for young people to pinch their cheeks with two fingers in order to reveal a scar. While this strange challenge did not pose major health risks, it could nevertheless be the cause of stellar angiomas, in other words a red spot born from the dilation of several blood vessels.

A law on the "numerical majority" soon to be examined

Last month, the European Commission had already taken the bull by the horns by banning TikTok on the professional devices of its employees. The governments of Canada, the United Kingdom and the White House have also taken similar steps. In France, the Senate is due to examine a bill on the "digital majority" that aims to make the use of social networks conditional on parental authorization. The boss of the platform Shou Zi Chew explained Thursday before the US Congress and admitted that TikTok still had some data of American users. "Today, there is still data that we need to delete," he acknowledged.