Bill on children’s overexposure to screens : learning to do without them, but not how to use them[1]
In the 2000s, American and Canadian medical professional organisations issued a set of rigid rules to try to limit the problematic consequences of screens, such as limiting total recreational screen time to less than 2 hours a day. But these highly prescriptive guidelines have now largely been replaced by a more balanced approach to screen use. Since 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics has advised parents to work together with their children to create a family media use plan that goes beyond setting a duration. Similarly, the Canadian Paediatric Society, for young children, stresses quality over quantity and encourages parents to pay more attention to the content of the electronic media their young children use rather than to the total time spent using them[2].
That is why it is particularly regrettable that Bill no. 757 on preventing children’s excessive exposure to screens, passed by the National Assembly and soon to be voted on by the Senate, continues to reason in terms of “addiction” and “screen time”.
Indeed, this law claims to find its place “through the insertion of a dedicated chapter in the public health code, alongside the fight against dependencies such as smoking or alcoholism”. This amounts to equating screens with toxic substances whose consumption should be limited. Yet for the international community there is no such thing as “screen addiction”. Only since 2018 has there been, in the 11th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), a “gaming disorder”, translated on the French-language website of the World Health Organization as “trouble du jeu vidéo”. For one to speak of addiction, the disorder must have existed for more than 12 months with significant consequences for all areas of life. All other interests are neglected, including sleep and meals. It is, moreover, a so-called “behavioural” addiction, very different from addiction to a toxic substance.
Following the same logic, the various screens are treated indiscriminately and considered solely from the point of view of how long they are used. Yet all experts today agree on one point: while time spent on screens is the least bad possible criterion of problematic use, it is at the same time a very bad criterion. In other words, it is essential to take into account each time whether there is support, whether the medium is interactive or non-interactive, and whether the content is more or less suited to the user’s age. Moreover, the isolated effect of screens on development diminishes when one takes into account the lack of access to toys, leisure activities and outdoor facilities, and the lack of people available, physically or psychologically, for interaction[3]. Yet these two factors are associated with disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions. More than the time a child spends in front of screens, it is the assessment of their general lifestyle and the impact of screen use on their overall health that must be taken into account. Let us hope that one day sports facilities and the playgrounds and gyms of public schools will be accessible outside school hours, in particular at weekends, and that children will be able to benefit during the week from supervised activities whose cost to parents will depend on their income, on the model of the price of a school canteen meal.
That is why this law, despite a few common-sense proposals whose usefulness nobody thinks of disputing (such as the obligation to display warning messages on the packaging and advertising of digital products, the inclusion of recommendations in the pregnancy record book and the training of childhood professionals), could quickly encourage campaigns focused on reducing screen time while ignoring learning virtuous uses of screens and children’s need to have alternatives. Preventing screen overuse is as much a matter of parenting support and urban policy as of messages aimed at reducing consumption.
[1] A longer version of this text appeared in Le Monde on 25 March 2023
[2] Ponti M, Bélanger S, Grimes R, Heard J, Johnson M, Moreau E, et al. Screen time and young children: Promoting health and development in a digital world. Paediatrics & Child Health. 2017.
[3] McDonald, S.W., Kehler, H.L., Tough, S.C. (2018). Risk factors for delayed social‐emotional development and behavior problems at age two: Results from the All Our Babies/ Families (AOB/F) cohort, Health Sci Rep. 1, 82. https://doi.org/10.1002/hsr2.82
