At the microphone of Philippe Vandel, the doctor in neuroscience and director of research at Inserm, Michel Desmurget, warned about the dangers of screens on children. It is also the subject of his latest book "The factory of the cretin digital", published in Seuil.

INTERVIEW

Media Culture guest Friday, Michel Desmurger was keen to demystify the famous generation "Digital native". For the first time in human history, the average IQ has dropped, and for the neuroscience doctor, the screens are responsible.

According to Michel Desmurger, the observation is clear, the brains of children are not made to be so exposed to the screens: "It is a general danger that affects all factors of development, it affects the intellectual development, the language, the 'attention, memorization, emotional and social development.'

It also gives figures on exposure time, according to the ages of the children. Similar figures all over the world, in France, in the United States or in Australia: "In children of two or three years, we curl three hours a day, eight-year-old children are close to five hours, and then adolescents it becomes stratospheric, since it is between half past six and seven o'clock.It is too! It is extravagant and out of the ordinary! It is not excessive, it is beyond the excess! "

No screen before 6 years

The director of research at INSERM also takes the opportunity to disassemble the myth of "Digital Natives", the generation that grew up at the same time as the development of the Internet, an urban legend according to him: "This is a very practical myth , it allows to say "they learn, they know differently", when we look, actually they know how to use applications trivialissimes, but it is not because you know how to use them that you know how to use all that digital can have of positive, using Facebook, Snapchat or downloading a podcast does not make you a great computer scientist. "

The author of "The Anti-Diet: Lose weight for good" also explains that digital tools can not replace a learning in the flesh: "When an adult wants to explain what a drink to a child, he is going to show him and in three times he has understood, but we realize that with digital tools it takes between 20 and 60 repetitions for him to understand what the object in question is. "

Finally, Michel Desmurger gives some advice to parents about the use of digital tools on their children: no screens before 6 years, limited use less than an hour after 6 years, while avoiding exposure video games too violent or sexual. Other recommendations include avoiding eating while watching screens to promote concentration and social interaction.