Four hours a day: it is the time that a teenager spends, on average, on the Internet and social networks such as Tiktok or Instagram. The use of social networks, and more broadly digital, is now integrated into the depths of our society. Unlimited sources of information, window windows, these platforms can also offer powerful tools allowing adolescents to break taboos and encourage better self -esteem.
But the risks are there, numerous and insidious, with destructive consequences for a youth that is built, which emancipates. We – political leaders, digital actors but also parents – have a collective responsibility to offer the youngest development free from interference harmful to their health and their critical mind. And we, European deputies of the presidential camp, have the intimate conviction that Europe can and must effectively protect our children from the drifts orchestrated by platforms and their algorithms.
Anxiety. Sleep disorders. Eating disorders. Mutilations. Concentration disorders. Addiction to screens. Hatred of the other. Disinformation. Cyberbullying. Exhibition to pornographic content. Pedocrime. The list of risks and pernicious and destructive effects of social networks on the youngest is as long as alarming. Their consequences are dramatic and can lead to the worst, as in suicide. It must question us, all of them: which company do we want for our children and the adults they will become?
Certainly not a society where absolute and sickly thinness is advocated with “Trend” On Tiktok. Certainly not a society where masculinist content proliferate and attack the freedom and security of girls and women. Certainly not a company where cyberbully prosperous and multiplies the number of victims. Certainly not a society where the hatred of the other and violence become the rule, and tolerance, the exception. Certainly not a society where pedocrime destroys the lives of our children. Certainly not a society where facts are defeated by massive disinformation and foreign interference. Certainly not a society where the mental and physical health of the youngest is sucked step by step, slyly, by the screens.
You have 55.52% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
Source: Lemonde