Smartphones, video games, online homework: screens are everywhere in teenagers' lives. Faced with the risks of addiction and the effects on mental and physical health, some French parents and teachers are pushing back. Rayan is 13 years old and, like nine out of 10 children his age, he owns a smartphone. Until a few months ago, he would spend several hours a day playing free online games. "I just wanted to stay home in my bedroom all the time, shutters closed, playing Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Brawlstars..." he recalls. Within weeks, Rayan was hooked. On days off school, he could spend up to 12 hours a day in front of a screen. His concentration suffered, and so did his grades. "He stopped going out, he was always in his room. You had to nag him, and when you took his phone away, he'd storm off to his room and turn the whole place upside down," his mother recalls. Rayan himself admits he had lost all self-control: "I had this deep anger inside because gaming was supposed to relax me, but in the end it was doing the exact opposite." His parents felt completely out of their depth. "He wasn't my son anymore, it was really hard... We didn't know what to do with him anymore," his mother explains. "We also felt like we were bad parents," his father says. Feeling out of their depth, his parents eventually decided to ask for help. 'The only comparison that holds up is alcohol or hard drugs' At the Georges Daumézon Hospital near Orléans, psychologist Sabine Duflo sees screen-addicted teenagers once a week. Ninety percent of her patients are boys around the age of fourteen, who play free online multi-player video games. All these games share one thing in common: random rewards. "It's that randomness that creates the addiction," explains Duflo. "The only fair comparison is alcohol or hard drugs," adds the psychologist, who is also the founder of the Collective on Screen Overexposure (COSE). In her view, there is only one solution for overcoming this addiction: withdrawal. "If your child was 13, had a drinking problem, and I prescribed a detox, you'd think that was perfectly reasonable, right? It's the same thing with video games." The first few days of withdrawal were hard for Rayan, but within a few weeks, he started noticing a difference. "I actually think more about my friends now, about going out with them," he says. His mother says he's become much more of a chatterbox. Today in France, most children get their first smartphone at the age of nine, and according to the national health authority, spend more than four hours a day on screens outside of school time. Many health professionals are raising the alarm about the risks to children's and teenagers' mental and physical health: deteriorating sleep quality, exposure to violent or pornographic content, stress, anxiety, depression and declining attention spans. Faced with the dangers of smartphones, parents join forces In response to these risks, some French parents are banding together. Anne-Laure Bailly coordinates the "Growing Up Better Without a Smartphone" initiative in the Paris region, encouraging families to hold off on giving their child a smartphone for as long as possible and not before the age of 15. "If your child's friends don't have a smartphone, it will be much easier to resist," she says. Gaëlle de Waru signed up for the initiative to protect her children. "The last thing I want is a child who's hooked on screens," she says. Her daughter Clémentine is nearly 14 and only has a flip phone, just like two of her closest friends. Clémentine says she notices the difference: "We actually spend real time together; we talk so much more." Contradictory messages Despite parents' best efforts, it's almost impossible to keep their children off screens because teachers routinely assign homework that requires going online. "I resist, and then the school turns around and asks for the opposite," says de Waru. We asked the French ministry of education what solutions were being considered to avoid forcing parents to equip their children with smartphones. We received no response. But some schools are taking matters into their own hands. At Collège Alphonse Daudet in Paris, principal Sébastien Blondot has banned students from using the school management platform Pronote and has asked teachers to stop assigning homework that requires a screen. "The idea is very simple: explaining to students and parents that a child does not need a smartphone to do their schoolwork," he says. That said, technology has not been banned altogether. "We're not banning digital tools, we're managing them," says teacher Yohan Abou. "It also helps put parents back at the centre of their child's education," adds Meriem Guendafa, chair of the school's local parent council. These initiatives, driven by a handful of teachers and parents, are still few and far between. But they reflect a shared determination: to let teenagers experience their school years without falling into an all-digital world.
