What if we asked why parents put their children in front of screens?
Emmanuel Macron’s recent remarks about children’s excessive screen use and the need for incentive-based, or even punitive, measures against parents who are not fulfilling their educational role make it necessary to ask a prior question. Why do some parents leave their children in front of screens? So let us try to take a brief stock of these situations.
Lack of information
This is obviously the first reason that comes to mind. At the 3/6/9/12 association, we have been offering freely accessible information material for over 10 years[1], and this enables doctors, nurses, physiotherapists or speech therapists, and even schools, to inform parents by means of posters of the age ranges at which it is advisable to introduce screens. But much broader campaigns are obviously desirable, and the 3/6/9/12 association has no power to organise them. For example, putting on all advertising posters for digital products the slogan: “Play, move, talk with your child: too much screen time harms their development”. Or printing on all packaging of digital products: “May harm the psychomotor and emotional development of children under three”. And as it has now been amply demonstrated that the use of a smartphone by adults who interact with a young child disrupts that child’s development, it would even be desirable to put on all smartphone packaging: “Never use your smartphone when you are communicating with your child: they need your gaze and your availability. Don’t let a screen come between you.”
Parents’ inability to regulate their own screen use
A second reason why some parents leave their children in front of screens is linked to the temptation to flee their own daily difficulties, including those their children sometimes cause them, by taking refuge in screens. Let us not forget that for many of our fellow citizens, managing daily life is very hard. Single parents have to do the shopping, look after the house, manage their job, and still have a little time for themselves and for their friends. Let us also remember that there are currently 10 million poor people in France and 3,500,000 people who do not get enough to eat every day. Screens then sometimes become a “potion of forgetfulness” that lets parents temporarily forget their precariousness. In addition, for some, their housing conditions (such as living in a single room with a small child) do not allow them to reconcile their wish for a diverting activity with their concern to protect their young child from screens. Finally, some parents from immigrant backgrounds simply never played when they were children themselves, because they had to work very early, and are unable to imagine doing so with their own child.
Lack of alternatives to screens
This is the third reason why parents leave their children in front of screens. When a school head warns me that eight- and nine-year-old children spend the weekend on video games, and I ask whether other options exist for them, the answer is often no. Many children who would like to play football at the weekend have nowhere to do so. Their parents forbid them from playing in the street, and they end up in their bedroom in front of a computer. Only parents from privileged social backgrounds can offer their children alternative activities today. They are not “more responsible” parents, just better-off ones.
It is therefore essential to take into account, in excessive screen use, the lack of space for collective play such as parks and playgrounds. In cities where less and less space is available for pre-teens and teenagers, opening school playgrounds on Saturdays and Sundays is an urgent necessity. Cities and municipalities should also organise supervised activities at the weekend, with payment scaled to family income, on the model of what is done for school canteens. It is obvious that opening libraries and toy libraries for the longest possible hours is also indispensable, and that it is likewise important to make it possible to obtain books and toys at home. Why shouldn’t toy libraries be present at markets, where a great many people on modest incomes gather?
As we can see, there is much better to do than make parents who leave their children in front of screens feel guilty! Information is indispensable, but an urban policy that creates alternatives to screens is just as indispensable!
[1] All the educational material on the site www.3-6-9-12.org is free of rights, and the flyers are available free of charge by contacting a.bardou@editions-eres.com
