“I’m addicted to my screens, and I know that you are too,” says Léna Mahfouf in a video published in mid-November on YouTube (more than 2 million views in two weeks). The influencer with 11 million subscribers talks about her “screen-free month” and invites us to “take back control over this addiction”.
“Influencers try to have messages that they consider positive and this disconnection side is seen as something virtuous,” believes Adam Bensoussan, who deciphers trends linked to content creators on his YouTube channel. “It’s quite new,” he adds, because not only “do they call for disconnection, but they also stage their own disconnection,” like the Léna Situations video.
This statement echoes recent debates around the harmfulness of social networks among young people and the time of exposure to screens, which continues to increase.
According to a study published in April by the National Book Center, young people aged 7 to 19 spend an average of 3 hours and 11 minutes per day on screens, and up to more than five hours for boys aged 16 to 19. A report submitted at the start of the year to Emmanuel Macron by a “screen commission” warned of the “hyperconnection experienced” by young people, while Australia has just passed an unprecedented law to ban social networks for those under 16. .
More legitimate because “it’s their domain”
For Adam Bensoussan, “YouTubers feel more legitimate to express themselves on the dangers of social networks because it is their field, rather than positioning themselves on politics or ecology”.
According to Thomas Rohmer, director of the Observatory of Parenthood and Digital Education (Open), this “stepping back” is also explained by their “even more excessive use of (these) tools, since it is their work “. An overexposure which resulted in the decision of several internet personalities to take a break, highlighting a certain weariness and a risk of burn-out linked to their exposure.
“All the initiatives that can make it possible to take a step aside […] are good to take,” says Thomas Rohmer. Especially since, as Michaël Stora, a psychoanalyst expert in digital practices, points out, this type of call “has quite a bit of influence because every teenager can recognize themselves in that”.
“The advantage of these influencers is that they speak the same language as these young people,” adds Jocelyn Lachance, anthropologist of adolescence. An observation shared by Thomas Rohmer: “Their messages are much more effective among young people than all (prevention) campaigns”.
« Hypocrite »
However, “there is a paradox in this way of creating prevention by influencers whose survival only exists because they are seen”, judges Michaël Stora. This is a criticism which was notably addressed to Inoxtag, whose documentary “Kaizen”, released in mid-September and retracing its ascent of Everest, concluded with a call to move away from the screens, considered hypocritical by its detractors . “It’s hard to change all of a sudden,” he confided two months after the release of his film, which has close to 40 million views on YouTube. Since then, he says he allows himself more “breaks”.
“I'm not telling you that I'm going to completely leave the screens because that would be completely hypocritical,” recognizes Léna Mahfouf in her video, but she now claims to put in place “a few rules” to limit her exposure, such as no longer sleep near your phone.
