A new bill aims to strengthen the use of parental controls on the Internet – archyworldys

After having supervised the work of child influencers in October 2020, French parliamentarians now intend to strengthen the protection of children, this time at their controllers and keyboards. Filed on November 3 by members of the presidential majority and made public on Friday on the website of the National Assembly, a new bill aims “To encourage the use of parental controls on certain equipment and services sold in France and allowing access to the Internet”.

“We see more and more testimonies of people who do not sufficiently protect the physical and mental integrity of their children in front of the screens, defends Bruno Studer, deputy La République en Marche (LRM) of Bas-Rhin, who carries the proposal. Too often, children accidentally encounter, but not only, content that is problematic or that is not of their age. “ The deputies at the initiative of the text invoke in their reasons the results of an IFOP consultation and survey conducted by the National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL), according to which “82% of children aged 10 to 14 say they regularly go online without their parents”, while “46% of parents of young people aged 8 to 17 have implemented solutions to monitor the child’s activity on the Internet”.

Faced with these judged uses “Worrying”, parliamentarians believe that parental control tools are still too difficult to install and use. Gold “In the same way that you don’t sell a car without a seatbelt, you don’t sell a connected device without parental controls”, compares Bruno Studer, who evokes several months of work and discussions with associations for the protection of children, manufacturers and operators but also the State Secretariat responsible for the digital transition and electronic communications, as well as that of the childhood and families.

Empower the parents of underage Internet users

Today, most terminals are already equipped with parental control tools and the law of 21 June 2004 for confidence in the digital economy forces Internet service providers to offer them to their subscribers. But this new proposal, which completes the postal and electronic communications code, goes further. It provides for an obligation to install a free parental control system for all manufacturers of connected objects, including smartphones, computers or game consoles. And it encourages manufacturers to offer this tool from the first commissioning. Parental control would not be installed by default, however: parents will have to choose to activate it themselves. As to the exact nature of the device, it will be determined later by regulation.

“Any tool that tends to increase vigilance or encourage parents to take an interest in their child’s practices is good to take, welcomes Olivier Gérard, head of media and digital uses at the National Union of Family Associations (UNAF), with whom the deputies discussed during the drafting of the text. But this should not disempower parents, who should try to understand not only what their children are doing on their phones, but also why or how they went to a site or downloaded such and such a program. Because parental control does not distinguish between accidental navigation and voluntary procedures, it is up to adults to initiate the dialogue. “

Marie Mayoud, president and co-founder of the Digital Parenting Foundation, for her part ensures “Subscribe to the principle of this approach”. Its endowment fund, created in February 2020 and originally of work on digital parental control, was also able to discuss with the deputies, without however accessing the text. She wants the State to go further in the study of behavior, training and the design of online services for parents:

“We are calling for the creation of an observatory for the use of parental control. Even today, a large proportion of parents are totally ignorant of their children’s digital uses. “

If adopted, the bill will entrust the control of these new obligations made to manufacturers to the National Frequency Agency (ANFR), which already supervises the placing of the equipment on the market. The deputies hope that the text will be examined in the National Assembly at the beginning of the year 2022 for implementation in the course of the first half of the year.