The Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, adopted on Wednesday evening at first reading a consensual bill aimed at facilitating the use of parental controls on connected devices to protect minors from pornography, cyberbullying or online violence. line. The text carried by LREM deputy Bruno Studer wants to force manufacturers to include free and easy-to-use parental control, devices that are still too little known or used. The activation of the control will remain a choice of the parents.
“This text will encourage parents to use parental control, because today 57% do not use it, almost a third do not even know it and a quarter find it too complex”, indicated the Secretary of State. in charge of Children and Families Adrien Taquet, stressing that three-quarters of them would nevertheless be ready to install it. The bill “responds to this expectation with a concrete and easily mobilizable solution”, he said.
“The physical or moral integrity of minors”
The senators made several changes to the text, in particular to broaden the scope of services and content that may be subject to parental control. The concept of services and content likely to harm “the physical or moral integrity of minors” has been replaced by that of services and content “likely to harm the physical, mental or moral development of minors”.
They also prohibited the commercial exploitation of data related to parental control and specified that the control devices must be “easily accessible and understandable”. Deputies and senators must meet next Thursday in a joint committee to try to agree on a common version of the text, which will come back to the National Assembly on February 22 and to the Senate on February 24. If they failed to find a compromise , the Assembly would have the last word.
Mr. Taquet also recalled having launched Monday “an action plan for the reasoned use of screens”. Parents “will be supported throughout the territory” by associations labeled Digital Parenting Campus, under the leadership of the National Union of Family Associations (Unaf), he said. The information is also available online “on a single free portal: jeprotegemonenfant.gouv.fr ».
