French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urged parents to keep kid rioters off the streets, adding that some young people looked to be emulating violent video games that had “intoxicated” them, news agency AFP reported. Speaking after chairing a crisis security meeting, the 45-year-old head of state stated that around one-third of those detained over three nights of riots were “young, or very young.”
“It’s the responsibility of parents to keep them at home. It’s not the state’s job to act in their place,” President Emmanuel Macron stated.
He also requested social media companies to delete the “most sensitive” rioting information and claimed video games played a part in the disturbances, which erupted after a teen was fatally shot by police on Tuesday.
“Platforms and networks are playing a major role in the events of recent days,” Macron said.
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“We’ve seen them — Snapchat, TikTok and several others — serve as places where violent gatherings have been organised, but there’s also a form of mimicry of the violence which for some young people leads them to lose touch with reality. You get the impression that for some of them they are experiencing on the street the video games that have intoxicated them,” he added.
Police unions have emphasised how many of those detained are under 14 or 15 years old.
“I don’t have much hope that they are going to go prison,” the head of the Alliance police union, Rudy Manna, told Europe 1 radio on Friday, AFP reported.
