The reappropriation of the city by children, an alternative to screens?

“As long as cities do not fully address this issue, a large part of the recommendations that we have made to combat the excessive use of screens by the youngest will remain a dead letter,” the psychiatrist told AFP. Serge Tisseron, member of the commission on children's exposure to screens.

“It is absolutely necessary for cities to create a sufficient number of play and exchange spaces and systematically open playgrounds and school gymnasiums to children and families on weekends,” he adds.

In its report submitted to Emmanuel Macron on April 30, the screens commission recommends in particular "populating" public spaces with alternatives to screens for children "and giving them back their full place, including noisy ones".

The commission considers it "essential to invest massively in the development of real alternatives to screens" allowing children to "get out of their homes".

It particularly emphasizes the importance of setting up play areas in all waiting areas (train stations, metro stations, bus shelters, airports) and in administrations and organizations open to the public. She also advocates the establishment of trains dedicated to children on trains.

Objective: to derail the “process of withdrawal” of children from public spaces observed for several decades in Western cities. A withdrawal attributed, among other things, to the technical progress of the internet and smartphones.

“The massive diffusion of mobile telephony and access to the Internet and social networks” has made “physical co-presence less and less necessary for fun and sociability practices,” notes Clément Rivière, lecturer in sociology at the University of Lille, in a note published in March 2023.

"Indoor children"

As a result, children in big cities have become “indoor children” – according to the term first used by Dutch geographers in 2006 – and often addicted to screens.

Faced with this observation, municipalities have tried in recent years to react by implementing a “child-friendly city” strategy, like Paris, Lyon, Rennes and Strasbourg.

“There is a real demand, we are trying to respond as best we can,” Céline Hervieu, delegated advisor in charge of early childhood at Paris town hall, told AFP. “The long-term objective is that all families can have a place nearby for activities with their children.”

She cites in particular mobile toy libraries, the “family Saturday” program in certain nurseries, the opening of playgrounds on weekends or “school streets”, these pedestrian zones near schools.

Initiatives welcomed by Madeleine Masse, architect-urban planner involved in the issue, who sees it as an “excellent starting point”.

“But we need to go further: we could do the same thing with the courtyards of office buildings, public spaces... These are m2 that are already there,” she points out. “As long as there are not enough spaces to accommodate them, young people will stay at home and find refuge in screens.”

An analysis of land use planning shared by Unicef, which launched the “child-friendly city” initiative in France in 2002. At the time, only 12 cities in France responded. More than twenty years later, there are 300 of them involved in urban planning.

“There is an awareness that children must be increasingly included” in the city, notes Aurélie Calaforra, head of the territorial programs division at Unicef. But this is still timid compared to the 35.000 municipalities in France. “There is not always a proactive policy to ensure that children have their place,” she notes.