- French teens have free access to porn and violent networks without any control
- These networks are unregulated.
- The Digital Majority Act should put an end to these practices
Imagine. While you think your child is communicating with his friends on Snapchat, Instagram or TikTok, he is actually on a trash network spreading pornographic and ultra-violent content.
Their names: Omegle, Coco or Bigo Live. These platforms all have two things in common: they are not subject to any regulation and the parents are unaware of them. So inevitably, it’s the door open to anything, including dangerous behavior.
“I am 18 or older”
In an edifying article published in Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en Francewe therefore learn that adolescents are confronted in spite of themselves with pornographic content or exchange messages with adults.
Like pornographic sites (which 2 million children watch each month in France), platforms such as Omegle or Coco.gg simply display an age control window “I am 18 or older” on which you just have to click to discover a sometimes appalling universe.
This is in any case what emerges from the testimonies given by some teenagers to the newspaper. A first 15-year-old girl explains that she was unwittingly confronted with pornographic images on Omegle while browsing the platform with friends. “It traumatized me a bit” she confides. More seriously, a young man of 16 found himself facing a thirty-year-old after having exchanged on Coco.gg. It testifies :
It is extremely dangerous. You can come across anyone, who can do anything to you (…) I was very scared. When I tried to leave, he wanted to block me.
On Bigo, a site “for teenagers” (according to the words of the site) the son of the French actress Firmine Richard stabs live another user with whom he had a disagreement. 500 people attended the scene.
Rules enforcement
Faced with these abuses and the powerlessness of parents, the authorities have prepared a law aimed at further protecting minors from the risks of the digital world.
At the beginning of March, the law on the digital majority, adopted unanimously by the National Assembly, plans to strengthen the entry filters on platforms and social networks.
Editors will be in the obligation to integrate an identity control system before you can enter their site. If they do not comply, they incur heavy fines.
For minors under the age of 15, parental approval will be required to access a platform. For children under 13, the ban will be formal, even if the parents agree.
It remains to be seen how this measure will materialize. For the time being, no identification solution has yet been chosen.
