Tablets, TVs, computers, phones, video games: screens are harmful before the age of six because they "permanently alter the health and intellectual capacities" of children: health experts called on Tuesday for a "collective awareness".
Introducing new advice for parents, the health record booklet which came into effect on January 1st stipulates "no screens before the age of three", and recommends "occasional use, limited to educational content and accompanied by an adult" between "three and six years old".
This health warning is the only recommendation from the Children and Screens report, produced a year ago by a commission of experts appointed by President Emmanuel Macron, to have come into force since.
At a time when the harmful effect of screens on children is not a consensus among researchers, the ten experts of this commission had described social networks as "risk factors" for depression or anxiety in the case of "pre-existing vulnerability", judging the level of exposure of children to pornographic and violent content to be "alarming".
In view of "recent knowledge", screens should be banned "before the age of six", wrote the five learned societies, including the French Society of Pediatrics and those of Public Health, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Ophthalmology, in an opinion piece addressed "to young parents, teachers, educators and pedagogues, caregivers, and political decision-makers".
"In 2025, there is no longer any doubt and the numerous international scientific publications are there to remind us: neither screen technology nor its content, including those supposedly 'educational', are suitable for a small developing brain," the signatories state.
Screens "do not meet the needs of the child" and, "worse, they hinder and alter the development of their brain," warn learned societies.
"Language delay, attention and memory problems, motor restlessness..." Health professionals and teachers "are seeing the damage caused by regular exposure to screens before starting primary school," they say.
Because a child's neurodevelopment results from "rich and varied observations and interactions with the environment," for which "the first six years of life are fundamental." While denying any intention to "demonize digital tools and their use," they urge parents to "create an environment conducive to the child's health and development" with "alternative activities: reading aloud, free play—whether board games or outdoor games—and physical, creative, and artistic activities."
While "all socio-educational backgrounds are affected", they emphasize that "exposure is greater in disadvantaged households".
- "State of emergency" against screens -
"We teachers can immediately tell which children are on screens and which are not, in terms of behavior, restlessness, and reasoning," Nathalie L., a primary school teacher in a village in the Drôme region, told AFP.
“I have a little girl who goes hiking and plays Monopoly with her family: her writing is bursting with imagination,” she reports. To “capture the attention of students who are used to switching between activities,” she has implemented “the flexible classroom: changing activities at most every fifteen minutes.”
On Monday, the association Pas à Pas l'Enfant lamented that "no concrete action has been put in place to avoid the health disaster predicted" by the report Children and Screens.
At the end of March, on France Inter, Servane Mouton, co-chair of the commission that wrote the report, pointed to the responsibility of "industrialists, who deploy treasures of inventiveness and creativity" to create applications "that will make us spend as much time as possible" on screens.
"Politicians," she added, "still struggle today to enforce regulations voted on at the European level and to disseminate widely a discourse that is up-to-date with scientific knowledge."
On Tuesday, former head of government Gabriel Attal and child psychiatrist Marcel Rufo published another opinion piece calling for a "state of emergency against screens" with "radical measures" to "save" teenagers from the harmful effects of social networks: creation of an "addict score", a "digital curfew" and an "assessment interview" of screen addiction in 6th grade, then in 2nd grade.
In November, Australia passed a law banning the use of social media for all those under 16.
Health Minister Catherine Vautrin "will speak on the subject of screens in the coming weeks," according to her office.
Source: Agence France-Presse