Serge Hefez, psychiatrist: “Our children are too alone in front of screens”

On June 10, a 14-year-old boy stabbed a teaching assistant at the Françoise-Dolto secondary school in Nogent, Haute-Marne . ^{A 9th} grader from a stable family background, he is not receiving treatment for psychological problems, has no criminal record, does not take drugs, and has not committed any serious violence, apart from two fights with other students.

A strong advocate for anti-bullying, a good student, and integrated into school life, he is described as "funny" by his classmates. He explained that he wanted to kill "any supervisor" after being scolded by one of them while flirting with a classmate in the yard.

The first elements that emerged from the investigation were the total absence of any expression of regret or compassion, the inability to grasp the importance of human life, a fascination with violence and death in films and series, as well as the regular playing of violent video games.

The description of this teenager and the incredible brutality of this act immediately brought to mind Jamie Miller, the complex and magnetic 14-year-old teenager at the center of the British series Adolescence , which has enjoyed global success by shedding a harsh light on violence radicalized by digital technology, on toxic masculinity and the male vulnerability of young boys, as well as on the probable role of a lack of empathy exacerbated by screens.

Like many others, I was deeply moved by the portrait of this child. The hyperrealistic illumination of his icy vulnerability, his ignorance of death, his nascent virile humiliation, his lack of remorse resonated with a still confused feeling that increasingly permeates my consultations today and that I actually link to a manifest absence of empathy. This feeling is accompanied by my fear that more and more young people are slipping into another world where I no longer have the possibility of reaching them.

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