(IFOP – Fondation pour l’Enfance – LER)
The Fondation pour l’Enfance has released the results of the 2nd cross-barometer between parents and early childhood professionals on the impact of digital technology on young children’s development (602 parents surveyed, 200 midwives and 100 paediatric nurses).
Digital tools and their uses are overwhelmingly perceived as having harmful effects on child development: 76% of the professionals surveyed have already considered a link between screen overuse and developmental difficulties in a child, and 96% of parents ! The other factors (sleep, nutrition, emotional environment…) are considered to have an equivalent impact by parents, and a smaller one by professionals. Many parents (64%) notice an increase in behavioural problems during moments of screen exposure (impatience, irritability).
But curiously, this perception has little influence on parents’ regulatory behaviour. While the majority of parents say they control content and/or exposure time, very few keep the youngest, under three, completely away from digital tools (only 17%). Their attitude remains ambivalent, and control over screen use is all the harder to exercise when the parents are themselves heavy users.
Early childhood professionals who make home visits very frequently see screens switched on when nobody is watching them, parents on their mobile phones even while looking after their children, and parents who can only calm their child by handing them a screen.
In addition, 84% of the parents surveyed film their child to document their progress, 75% send photos and videos to loved ones via WhatsApp, 44% post photos and videos on social networks, and 32% do not see what problems this practice might cause…
Early childhood professionals call for stronger awareness and information campaigns. They say they know the existing campaigns and recommendations and find them clear… whereas parents often judge them to be remote from everyday reality (66%) and hard to apply. 56% of parents think they are based on opinions rather than scientific studies, and 40% of them find them too alarmist.
Among the screen uses that parents are ready to reconsider are: introducing shared screen-free activity time (56%), having meals without the television (51%), and not using their mobile when they are with their child (47%).
Curiously, the professionals surveyed do not always raise the question of screens in their consultations (only 49%). This is probably a pity, because a privileged, individualised bond is often a good basis for getting messages across, or even imagining small challenges or small contracts with families.
The Fondation pour l’Enfance calls for digital technology to be made a genuine public health issue in order to bring about widespread awareness. This must involve circulating precise, non-guilt-inducing messages on the good practices to adopt to encourage a reasoned use of screens.
For our part, we draw the following lessons from this new survey:
- Awareness campaigns seem to struggle to convince. We wonder about a fragmentation of messages, as is happening on the internet. Many associations and collectives have moved into the screens niche, with discourse sometimes more ideological than reasoned, and it is understandable that families are lost.
- At 3-6-9-12, we are working on a protocol that will let us assess the impact of our prevention messages in terms of behaviour change among families. For, as we saw in reading these figures: while parents are mostly convinced of the negative impact of screens, they do not change their daily uses as a result…
- This survey allows us to insist once more on the problematic impacts of parental technoference, that is, parents’ use of technological tools at moments when they are looking after their children.
On this subject, let us recall the little book by our colleague Olivier DURIS, a member of the 3-6-9-12 association, “Quand l’écran fait écran à la relation parents-enfants” (Yapaka), available at this link:
https://www.yapaka.be/sites/yapaka.be/files/publication/ta-135-duris-web.pdf. Also an interview on the Yapaka site : https://www.yapaka.be/video/video-comment-la-technoference-interfere-dans-la-relation-adulte-enfant.
Not forgetting our prevention posters on this subject, free to download : https://www.3-6-9-12.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/affiche-votreenfantregard_2019.pdf
