Regulating children's access to screens is one of the priorities announced by Emmanuel Macron at his press conference on Tuesday, January 16. A group of experts is due to report back by March on "the proper use [in this area] for our children" at home as well as at school, in the words of the French president.

The 10-member group met for the first time on January 10, according to the Elysée, which announced its members on Wednesday, January 17. It is co-chaired by neurologist and neurophysiologist Servane Mouton and psychiatry professor Amine Benyamina, head of the psychiatry and addictology department at Paul-Brousse Hospital. The eight other members come from diverse backgrounds: an epidemiologist, a psychologist, two law experts, two education specialists and two digital experts.

Four main areas of work have been identified:

To achieve this, the experts will review the scientific literature and interview a number of people. "This multidisciplinary commission will have to ensure that these recommendations are applicable at both the legal and European level," said Amine Benyamina, who believes "the president's ambition is not necessarily to ban but to move toward a paradigm shift in screen use."

There is no denying it: Screen time is on the rise, and from a very early age. As a result, more and more parents are at a loss when it comes to digital use and risk awareness. "Spending time in front of a screen has an impact on a child's emotional, sensory and cognitive development," said President Macron. This has been proven by numerous scientific studies.

However, a study in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, published in September 2023, highlighted that the context of use and the family environment play a more important role than screen time. Screen time also weighs on interaction time, with parents in particular – who may themselves be on their screens – and encroaches on time devoted to sports, reading, sleeping and so on. The president also criticized the heavy use of social media, devoid of any hierarchy regarding information, which blurs the "relationship with the truth."

The subject of young people's access to screens is not exactly a new issue for the Macron government. But, until now, the majority had focused mainly on parental control tools, which enable limits to be set on time or access to phones, tablets and game consoles. In 2022, the government backed a bill, which, starting in July, will require all phone manufacturers to activate parental control software by default on all new devices on the market.

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