Young people and digital technology: what if one of the answers lay in the city? [1]
Young people born between 1995 and 2010 grew up with a smartphone in their pocket, but the way they use it is not unrelated to the dramatic reduction in physical meeting places for teenagers in cities over the last 20 years, nor to parental worries that force them to communicate remotely. Despite the existence of problematic practices, various studies[2] have shown that moderate use of these tools (between two and five hours a day or so, depending on the activity) seems to have a slightly positive influence on their mental wellbeing. In particular, it increases the feeling of being connected with friends, reduces the sense of isolation and strengthens existing friendships. And it encourages the expression of the desire for extimacy[3], which prompts people to reveal certain aspects of themselves previously kept secret, which contributes to building self-esteem and creating a wider social network. This generation’s relationship to work, culture, family, politics and sexuality is in any case completely different from that of the millennials born between 1980 and 1995.
The problem is that young people who are struggling may be tempted to turn to these same technologies for comfort. This is notably the case with social networks and video games. This situation is all the more worrying because some algorithms are specially designed to exploit users’ cognitive biases so as to keep them on the platforms ever longer, make them give ever more personal information and make them buy ever more objects, real or virtual (such as clothes for their avatar). There are even algorithms that aim to manipulate the users of digital platforms without their knowledge to steer their buying behaviour, but possibly also their political choices.
Faced with such a situation, prevention must obviously be multifactorial and bring together legislators, social workers, teachers, paediatricians and general practitioners,
The legislator must require social networks to regulate content and to evolve their algorithms so as to make cooperation and collaborative work possible.
Digital education must include explaining the traps of algorithms and how the brain works in front of screens. Children must be helped to find their bearings in the “four jungles of the Internet”: 1) the economic logic of platforms, based on exploiting users’ data; 2) the logic of locking social network users into the first opinion they expressed; 3) the harmful influence of pornography and of the sexist sexual models conveyed by Western cinema; 4) and the warning about the risks of rolling news and fake news.
Finally, a bold urban policy must allow every child, whatever their social background, to benefit from supervised alternatives to screens at a cost suited to each family’s income.
[1] This text was published on the occasion of a Neuj’pro meeting in the département of Allier ; https://neujpro.fr/les-jeunes-et-le-numerique-et-si-une-des-reponses-etait-dans-la-ville-par-serge-tisseron/
[2] The State of the World’s Children 2017 : Children in a Digital World, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, 2017.
[3] Tisseron, S. (2001). L’Intimité surexposée, Hachette.
