Using phones and social media before the age of 15 is a moratorium on the Emmanuel Macron campaign.
The French leader endorsed suggestions in a statement that a panel of experts on the effects of young people’s screen contact presented to the Elysée.
” All the experts say that monitor habit is the breeding ground for all kinds of problems: abuse, violence, dropping out of school”, he said at a press conference to release the strategy for early legislative elections.
The French government’s programme for the European elections already included the plan to ban social networks for under-15s.
Mr. Macron defended the idea of parental controls over access to social networks before that age during his speech on Europe at the Sorbonne in April.
However, the practicalities of implementing such a measure have yet to be defined: in April, Marina Ferrari, the digital economy minister, convened a meeting of industry players at Bercy to discuss, among other things, a technical solution for controlling the age of Internet users wishing to access certain sites.
In a letter sent in mid- August, Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, criticised the government for adopting a law aimed at introducing a ban before the age of 15, which he felt” contradicted” the European framework.
Limiting screen time
Tools for limiting screen time for minors are already accessible on some mobile devices and apps, and they are listed on a government website in France.
Parents can set online connection limits on iPhones or consoles and set time limits for social network apps like Instagram and TikTok.
Meta, for its part, has introduced a “late notification” feature that appears “automatically” on the Instagram account of under- age users if they use the application between 10pm and 4am, to encourage them to close it.
Making the adoption of these tools required would imply enforcing this legal responsibilities on parents or app developers.
” Technically, the government could ask applications to block access after a certain time”, Olivier Ertzscheid, a lecturer in information and communication sciences, told AFP in January.
He added that the issue would be more about the social acceptability and legal justification of such an obligation.
” This kind of measure would be unprecedented in a democratic European nation,” he continued.
