Your child is addicted to screens ? A consultation offered to get him off the screen

À l'hôpital Jean-Verdier (AP-HP) de Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis), une pédiatre reçoit des parents désemparés pour les aider à faire décrocher leurs jeunes enfants des écrans. Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash

"By watching television, his brain stopped being stimulated." At the Jean-Verdier hospital (AP-HP) in Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis), a pediatrician receives distraught parents to help them get their young children off screens.

Every Monday morning, Dr Sylvie Dieu Osika holds the only hospital consultation dedicated to this addiction for children under 4 years old.

At 3 and a half years old, Cheickna Ousmane "can't pronounce clear sentences", explains her father, Ousmane, who works in logistics.< /p>

Cause: an addiction to screens, established from a very young age.

From nine months old, the little boy could “spend his entire days in front of the television”, his father regrets today.

"We were in the middle of Covid, we didn't go out, so we put on the TV. First programs for us, then for him. When we turned it off, he had seizures. “That’s how we knew something was wrong,” says his mother, Sissoko.

Last August, during a visit to the emergency room for an ear infection, the little boy's seizures raised suspicion of a underlying problem, undoubtedly linked to screens. For several months, the development of his language had also stopped.

"His uncle, who is a doctor, scared us very much by mentioning symptoms similar to autism", reports the father.

"Be available"

So in September, the parents made a radical decision: the television in the apartment was stored in the cellar. “Instead, we bought games", says the mother. "We don't want to repeat the same mistakes with our little sister, who just turned two years old".

Since then, the toddler seems to have made progress: he looks into his eyes again and has opened up to others, his parents say.

A decision applauded by Dr Dieu Osika, who encourages them to continue their efforts: "In his presence, you must absolutely ban screens and be available to him".< /p>

"On platforms, children's channels, we are made to believe that they are stimulated by learning the alphabet, nursery rhymes or even a foreign language, but that's all the opposite happens: their brain stops working, it becomes totally passive, explains the doctor.

The pediatrician opened her consultation in 2019, after realizing that screens, just like sleep or eating, had an impact on the child's development .

When they meet her, after several months of waiting, the parents must complete a questionnaire to assess their child's overexposure. After a clinical examination, the pediatrician provides parents with advice on "weaning". She will see the family again at a follow-up appointment.

"A few complicated months"

At two and a half years old, Liam, another little patient, is a bit "in his bubble", has "a lot of seizures" and don't speak yet. "Following an alert from the nursery, we stopped giving him a phone or a tablet", says his mother, Ahlan.

But he still watches television in the morning, turned on by his 6-year-old big brother.

"The whole family will have to participate to be able to drop out and this may go through a few complicated months", warns the pediatrician.

If, initially, the consultation was aimed at children under 11 years old, it was gradually restricted, in the face of an explosion in demand, to those under 6 years old then to those under 4 years old.

"It'today is a public health problem", warns Sylvie Dieu Osika, hoping that the mission of the group of experts , charged by the Élysée by April with assessing the impact of screens on young people, will this time lead to concrete measures.

"Last March, a bill to prevent overexposure of young people was adopted by the Assembly but must still be examined in the Senate. We’ve already lost a lot of time,” sighs the pediatrician.

"If we tackle the problem early enough, it is possible to remedy it", she reassures however.