F.G. In this expanded reissue of your 2013 book, you stress the positive aspects of screens. Can you tell us what positive practices we can find thanks to screens in 2024?
S.T. I talk about their positive aspects because we tend to talk much more about problematic uses than about good uses, and there is too much alarmist talk. Yet good practices exist in most families. Together, people discuss the films or series they feel like watching, and compare points of view after watching. You can also play video games with several people, which generally lets children have a good laugh at their parents’ clumsiness and reveals unexpected skills to them. And let us not forget either the use of a digital camera by children from the age of six or seven. It is an opportunity to explain to them two essential rights that it will be very useful for them to have understood when they start using social networks: the right to privacy, which is the right not to be photographed or filmed if I do not want to be ; and the right to one’s image, which is the right to decide who can see an image that represents me, and in particular whether or not it can be put on the Internet.
F.G. What is the “potion of forgetting” in your view, and how can it be reduced or even avoided?
S.T. I have called the power screens have to make us forget all our worries the “potion of forgetting”. The novel already had this power, but screens have a far greater power of immersion, and that is still little compared with virtual reality. Of course, we are all tempted, at one time or another, to use them to forget problems that seem to us, at least temporarily, insoluble. And those who live in economic, professional or emotional insecurity obviously tend to turn to them more. The only way I have found to keep this risk away as far as possible is to switch on a screen only to watch a specific programme, and always to set ourselves a time limit for that viewing. Of course, setting ourselves a time limit is not enough to respect it. We always go over. But if we do not set ourselves a time limit, we risk going hugely over! With obvious problems for sleep and therefore for our capacities for attention, concentration and socialisation.
F.G. What are the impacts of adults’ use of screens in the presence of their children? How can we raise awareness without making people feel guilty or banning the tool?
S.T. Until the 2020s, the problematic role of screens for a very young child was considered only from the point of view of leaving the child in front of the television. But since 2020, several North American studies have appeared that warn of another danger: the interference with the relationship between an adult and a child caused by the use of a mobile phone. This is what is called technoference. Indeed, an adult who uses their smartphone while communicating with their baby obviously has less attention for the baby, and as a result makes shorter sentences and obviously has less expressive facial expressions. Yet it is being fully present in communication with a baby that allows the baby to enter into socialisation. A child brought up by parents who are not very available because they are busy with their smartphone has a greater risk of socialisation disorders, even behavioural disorders identical to those of children left in front of a screen.
F.G. In your book you discuss the fact that it is important to keep supporting young people even after 12, hence the “plus”. However, how can we support young people in their use of networks like TikTok, without being friends with them or reading their conversations?
S.T. It is quite obvious that if a parent never took an interest in their child’s screen activities before 12, it is unlikely that the child will agree to start a dialogue about their activities on social networks. A parent in this situation may well get this answer from their teenager: “what’s come over you? I would have so loved to talk with you about my games on the Internet and the films I watched when I was seven or eight. But you always made it clear that you were not interested. What’s come over you? ”
So we must start early. Ideally as soon as the child watches their first programmes. Of course they cannot yet recount the events they have witnessed, but through their questions, the parent encourages them to build sentences and to develop their storytelling skills, which will be very useful to them later, in both their love life and their professional life.
Let us also avoid spying on our child. In this little game, they always win by developing what is called “a shadow profile”, which makes them elusive but at the same time feeds in them a sense of secrecy. And of course it is the child’s trust in their parent that is lost in the process. And the parent will then have great difficulty communicating with their child about the values they hold dear.
F.G. For effective prevention, in your book you explain the importance of “educational” rather than alarmist prevention. Why does this work better?
S.T. Anyone who demonises screens soon comes across to teenagers as someone who understands nothing about them. For example, the very negative talk about TikTok is obviously true in part, but not in another. This platform does offer creation tools that exist on no other. But you need to be accompanied to feel like discovering and using them. That is why, since I created the 3/6/9/12 milestones in 2008, I have placed them under the light of three principles: guidance, alternating activities with and without screens, and finally learning self-regulation, which begins with the ability to wait. This educational, non-alarmist prevention then rests on four reference points: limiting screen time of course, and this can only be done if we set an example as parents; choosing quality programmes, and not putting our children in front of programmes that are not specifically intended for them; favouring the most socialising and most creative screen activities; and obviously talking with them about what they see and do on screens, not at all to control them, but to develop their language and social skills.
F.G. In your view it is more relevant to look at how screens are used rather than the time spent on them. Why can time no longer be an indicator to take into account?
S.T. Because technologies and uses have diversified considerably. When there was only television, and a single channel, the ORTF, it was conceivable to take only screen time into account. But today the smartphone has become an all-purpose tool: you can watch series on your mobile phone, play video games alone or with others, interact on social networks, numb your mind with idiotic videos, watch educational channels, keep up with the news, watch YouTubers talk about just about everything, and even benefit from peer education, notably in the field of sexual health. In short, time spent on a screen without taking into account what is being watched, any interactivity, or the content has become an absurdity. In addition, recent studies show that for children it is also important to take into account the socio-educational environment in the broad sense, including living conditions, the existence of toys suited to their age, and the presence in their environment of people who are available to them. And in these areas, social disparities are massive, as the recent elfe study showed.
