“Digital break” at school: the mother of Samara, the teenager attacked in Montpellier, calls on parents to limit screen time “at home too”

Hassiba Radjoul, mère de Samara, adolescente de 13 ans agressée en avril dernier, aide sa fille et sa famille à se reconstruire. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

200 establishments in France, including 12 in the Montpellier academy, are testing a total ban on telephones in middle schools. The e-Enfance association, via the “3018”, comes to the aid of families whose children are victims of cyberbullying. A number well known to Hassiba Radjoul, mother of Samara, the teenager beaten up last April outside the Arthur Rimbaud middle school in Montpellier.

Revenge porn, fisha, doxing, phishing, grooming… the barbaric lexicon of ordinary online harassment, is full of anglicisms synonymous with spreading rumors, mockery, identity theft, dissemination of intimate photos…

45,000 distress calls to "3018" in the first quarter of 2024

Online violence against young women has been on the rise since 2020 on the 3018 assistance platform managed by the e-Enfance Association. “We received 45,000 calls in the first quarter of 2024”, details Natacha Budin, communications director. That is 500 to 900 calls per day, shared by the twenty or so listeners, psychologists and lawyers, 7 days a week, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

“15,000 contents were deleted, in partnership with social networks and 10,000 files were processed in the first half of the year”. And so resolved.

The association offers a reporting procedure that allows for the rapid removal of harmful content, “but when a fisha account (from the verlan “affiche”, i.e. the publication of photos or videos of a sexual nature) has been deleted by its author, we can no longer act on what was disclosed upstream”.

Hassiba Radjoul, mother of Samara, “my daughter was a victim of harassment”

This is perhaps what happened to young Samara, 13, violently attacked on April 2 by several students near the Arthur Rimbaud college in Montpellier. Since the conviction of the minor perpetrators, her mother has been working to have the harassment suffered by her daughter recognized in the months leading up to her assault.

“Beyond the assault, I want it to be recognized that physical and social media harassment was actively targeting my daughter, at least since the start of the 2022 school year”, says Hassiba Radjoul.“And that people within the school did not act knowingly, despite the mockery, calls for rape, to murder… As for the Phare system of national education, a plan to prevent harassment, it was only implemented in September 2023 in this college! At the time, I called 3018 to get us out of there".

First violence: the silence that victims impose on themselves

For Natacha Budin, the isolation of victims prevents the qualification of this harassment, which is nevertheless crucial. But for Hassiba Radjoul, the mechanism of silence is a violence that the victim inflicts on herself.

Faced with the stated objective of social networks, which is to make their users spend as much time online as possible, the partnership with the user defense association is not so simple, at a time when it comes to demanding closure or pointing out a malicious account. “As we are trusted reporters, in connection with the European Union, our reports are processed quickly by Meta, Tik-Tok, X, Insta, etc. But this remains insufficient in number. Our hobby horse is age control”, insists Natacha Budin.

No more than an hour away from their cell phone!

According to a study conducted by Audirep, and distributed by the E Enfance association, 24% of young people would not last more than an hour without their smartphone. 28% among high school students. Currently, 1 in 4 families is confronted with cyberbullying by one of their children. 67% of children aged 8 to 10 now say they are registered on social networks. Now, 46% of children have a smartphone before they are 10 years old and connect to the Internet without having to ask permission.

The digital majority, “is 15 years old !"

"You have to be 15 years old to register on a social network, and between 13 and 15 years old, you need the authorization of both parents. Punitive measures against networks are not put in place". Currently, 67% of children aged 8 to 10 say they are registered on social networks. A figure that gives an idea of ​​the scale of the phenomenon among the youngest.

For her part, Samara had to change schools at the start of the school year. “She has found a peaceful environment, but she is still very affected. I call on all parents to be vigilant about phone use. And children, to talk to an adult at the first slip-up. A digital break is good, but we also need to control and limit screen time at home”.

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