“As with tobacco, whose harmfulness led to strict regulation to protect minors, the time has come to go beyond simple awareness-raising and support measures… The introduction of a legal age for the possession of smartphones and unsupervised access to the Internet would be a major pillar of primary prevention, making it possible to drastically reduce children's exposure to the harm identified."
“The weight of risk and harm clearly outweighs that of opportunity, which can be guaranteed by other means,” says the Ombudsman fir Kanner a Jugendlecher (Okaju, the ombudsman for children and adolescents) in its annual report published on Wednesday 20 November.
According to the OECD, there are four main categories of danger for children in the digital world: dangers related to content, contact, consumption and conduct. In its report, Okaju stresses several points: first, increased vulnerability. The omnipresence of digital technology exposes children to new risks, including cyber-bullying--which affects one in five children in Luxembourg--sextortion and access to inappropriate content. The current legal framework, in particular the grand ducal regulation of 8 January 2015, “is no longer adapted to the realities of the digital world and needs to be updated as a matter of urgency to take better account of social networks,” says the report.
The ‘3-6-9-12’ rule
There is also the impact of digital technology and screens on the health and development of children and teenagers. Okaju cites the French psychiatrist and psychologist Serge Tisseron, who has “a rule that’s easy to understand and put into practice: the ‘3-6-9-12’ rule. In concrete terms, this rule means: no screens before the age of three, no personal games consoles before the age of six, no accompanied Internet before the age of nine and no Internet alone before the age of twelve (or before starting secondary school).”
“This transformation requires a strong and determined political will… the public authorities must set clear benchmarks--if their position is unstable, parents will not follow. This chain of responsibility, from public authorities to parents and then to children, is essential if we are to create a safer digital environment.”
And it’s a subject that the Luxembourg government, and more specifically the education ministry, has taken seriously. At the end of September, it launched the awareness campaign ‘For a healthy screen-life-balance for our children,’ with “concrete recommendations for the safe and responsible use of digital tools.” The advice was inspired by the work of Tisseron. In particular, the campaign focuses on the three key stages in the development of children and young people: avoiding screens under the age of 3, avoiding personal smartphones under the age of 12 and avoiding social media under the age of 15. The ministry of education also announced a for the start of the 2024-2025 school year, an initiative welcomed by Okaju.
Strengthening Okaju
The 2024 report also mentions the government’s Bee Secure initiative, launched in 2010, which aims to raise awareness among the general public of “safer and more responsible use of digital technologies, and in particular to empower children, young people and those around them (parents, teachers, educators and others) through targeted offers.” For ombudsman Charel Schmit, “this service is a major strength, providing prevention and assistance via a helpline and stopline.” But he recommends that it be “strengthened with more proactive means of action… these mechanisms are still inadequate because they work a posteriori and the virality of content on social networks requires short-term and a priori regulation to be effective with sensitive audiences.”
Read also
For Okaju, it would therefore be necessary to introduce a system for monitoring reports, which is currently lacking because of the anonymity associated with the stopline, but also to make Bee Secure’s helpline available 24/7. It is currently contactable Monday to Friday from 9am to 4pm.
More generally, the report highlights several major challenges concerning the rights and well-being of children in Luxembourg. Four crucial issues in particular are targeted: the , an integrated child protection system, children at risk of poverty and the protection of children from violence and other harm in the digital environment. This last topic is multifaceted, as it concerns both cyberbullying, for example, and the impact of screens on the mental and physical health of young people.
This article was originally published in .