To save our teenagers, Gabriel Attal wants to cut them access to social networks
While the smartphone will be prohibited at the start of the 2025 school year in all collegesthe battle against the digital world continues. Gabriel Attal actually arranged in the columns of Parisian On a radical project: the ban on social networks among teenagers under the age of 15.
The danger of social networks among young people
Via a co-written forum with the child psychiatrist Marcel Rofo, the president of the parliamentary group Together for the Republic and former Prime Minister begins by recalling the danger of social networks.
Suffering, harassment, doubts and brutality are thus mentioned, in “young people locked in their rooms, more and more cut in the world, living in a bubble where all the information, images and ideas are similar”*.
Speaking “threat” From social bond, democracy and mental health, Gabriel Attal recalls that adolescents pass between 3:30 a.m. and 5 hours a day in front of a screen, “And soon more time in front of their screens than at school”.
Radical measures, between blocking and limitation of social networks
Alarmism is therefore in order, and the solution seems to have been found, “Disintoxicate our young people”. The politician thus speaks of an emergency: detection of addiction to screens, which should be carried out via an evaluation interview at the start of the sixth and second school year.
The second measure is the Access limitation to social networks for those under 15. “A parliamentary commission of inquiry is underway under the leadership of the deputy Laure Miller, but we can already offer some radical and common sense solutions”can we read.
A “Systematic digital curfew” Among young people from the age of 15 to 18 is then mentioned, with social networks closed from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. To tackle addiction even more, Gabriel Attal talks about giving 30 minutes of normal use of a social network in this age group, then spending it in black and white for at least an hour.
Last point envisaged: limit access to social networks to minors to one hour per day.
Platforms directly penalize
After talking about addiction detection and tools to get out, Gabriel Attal finished by speaking of social networks empowerment, forcing them to act to protect young people.
The penalty of platforms is also mentioned with surcharges resembling the devices implemented on tobacco and alcohol. In the case of social networks, he offers to tax the revenues generated in France at 2 %, which will then be allocated to “Research and management of mental health”.
And if nothing is done for “Cooperate with us” By protecting French youth, the sentence would be the outright ban.
What to think of all this?
Gabriel Attal takes place here a political project anchored in manners, and a real danger which is addiction to screens and social networks.
It remains to be seen how these proposals will be translated concretely into the law, and if they will succeed in finding a balance between protection of young people, respect for individual and feasibility freedoms for the platforms concerned.
