A lot happened during summer recess: France’s constitutional council struck down the core of a new law to ban social media for under 15 year olds, but it did validate the extension to high schoolers of a phone ban already in effect for younger pupils. Why one but not the other? On this the first day of school across this country and others, we’ll size up what’s best for future citizens, parents and teachers… all grappling in this age of distraction with the lure of screens.
Over in the U-S last week, state attorney generals succeeded where legislators have not, forcing the parent group of Instagram and Facebook to put curbs on screen time for teens. Meta opted to settle for 17 billion dollars rather than face the prospect of its boss Mark Zuckerberg answering questions under oath about encouraging addiction to his product. But social media’s only one challenge.
More and more teaching, homework and grading happens in the virtual world. What impact on humanity’s ability to hone its reading, writing and arithmetic skills, to learn critical thinking, how to learn, and to clear enough mind space to reflect? Quite the learning curve for all of us.
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Juliette Brown, Charles Wente.
This story originally appeared on France24
