4 hours ago
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Children under the age of six should not be exposed to screens, including television, to avoid permanent damage to their brain development, French medical experts have said.
TV, tablets, computers, video games and smartphones have “already had a heavy impact on a young generation sacrificed on the altar of ignorance”, according to an open letter to the government from five leading health bodies – the societies of paediatrics, public health, ophthalmology, child and adolescent psychiatry, and health and environment.
Calling for an urgent rethink by public policies to protect future generations, they said: “Screens in whatever form do not meet children’s needs. Worse, they hinder and alter brain development,” causing “a lasting alteration to their health and their intellectual capacities”.
Current recommendations in France are that children should not be exposed to screens before the age of three and have only “occasional use” between the ages of three and six in the presence of an adult.
The societies suggest the ban on screens should apply at home and in schools.
They wrote: “Neither the screen technology nor its content, including so-called ‘educational’ content, are adapted to a small developing brain. Children are not miniature adults: their needs are different needs.”
They add that every day health professionals and infant school teachers “observe the damage caused by regular exposure to screens before they [children] enter elementary school: delayed language, attention deficit, memory problems and motor agitation”.
The experts suggest regular exposure to screens – however brief – has also had a negative effect on children’s social and emotional development. They suggest the problem affects all social groups, but particularly disadvantaged households leading to greater “social inequalities”.
Alternatives including “reading aloud, free play, board games or outdoor games, physical, creative and artistic activities”.
The letter says: “It would occur to no one to let a child of under six cross the road on their own. Why then expose them to a screen when this compromises their health and their intellectual future?”
Last year, a report commissioned by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, found that French three- to six-year-olds spent an average of 1 hour 47 minutes a day in front of a screen in 2014-15, the latest available research. Since then, however, only one of the commission’s recommendations, concerning the exposure of under-threes to screens, has been implemented.
Former prime minister Gabriel Attal has gone further, proposing to ban children under 15 from social media, with an online “curfew” for 15- to 18-year-olds halting their access to social media at 10pm.
