According to French President Emmanuel Macron, young people in Europe should not be able to use the Internet without parental control until they are 15 years old at the earliest. “I am committed to a Europe-wide online maturity of 15 years”said Macron on Thursday in Paris. There must be parental control for younger children, said Macron.
“Would someone send their child into the jungle when they were five, ten or twelve years old?” Macron asked during a keynote speech on European policy at the Sorbonne University in Paris. “Today we open the gate to the jungle for them for several hours every day,” he added. There were threats of cyberbullying, pornography and child sexual abuse on the Internet.
“This space is neither regulated nor moderated”, criticized Macron. In some of the major online services there are only a few dozen Francophone moderators who control content. That’s why it’s necessary to “take back control of our children’s lives.”
Online services would have to be made to control content more closely. “This is a civilizational battle and it must be waged in Europe,” emphasized Macron. His Prime Minister Gabriel Attal recently called for access to online services for children under 13 to be banned in France.
According to a study by the World Health Organization, in 2022, around one in six school children between the ages of eleven and 15 had been bullied in online services. Some victims of bullying suffered from headaches, stomach aches and even depression.