Macron Accuses TikTok of Fueling Violence Outbreak in France

President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has accused TikTok, Snapchat, and video games of provoking widespread riots that have spread throughout France following the shooting of a 17-year-old delivery driver by the police, according to Kotaku.

Macron stated that social media platforms play a "significant role" in fueling ongoing unrest, citing Snapchat and TikTok as examples.

He outlined plans to collaborate with technology companies to remove "the most sensitive content," emphasizing the need for "accountability from these platforms."

It is reported that the French police are investigating individuals who are inciting continued protests on social media.

"Violence has destructive consequences, and we will not tolerate content that promotes or fuels hatred or violent behavior on any part of Snapchat. We proactively moderate this type of content, and when we find it, we remove it and take appropriate action. We allow content that factually informs about the situation," representatives from Snapchat stated.

However, Macron not only believes that applications are solely responsible for the ongoing protests; he also drew attention to video games. "Sometimes we have the feeling that some of them live on the streets of video games that have intoxicated them," he said.

As psychologist Dr. Rachel Kowert mentioned in an interview with Kotaku in June 2022, "We have been studying the link between games and violence for 20 years and have not found any consistent conclusions that video games are directly related to real-life violence."

While there is a range of studies linking things like general criminality, low frustration tolerance, previous experiences of violence, etc., as well-established factors for violent behavior, we ignore them because they are serious societal issues that we do not know how to solve.

Using video games as a scapegoat for violence is not new—since the Columbine massacre in 1999, they have been considered a cause, and Fox News mentioned them after the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in 2022. However, there is no serious scientific research indicating that video games cause aggressive behavior in real life.

Recall that violence erupted in France after police shot and killed a 17-year-old Arab teenager named Nahel during a traffic check in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on June 27. Over the course of nearly a week of protests, more than 4,000 vehicles were burned, around 600 law enforcement officers were injured, and over 2,000 protesters were arrested. At least one protester's death has been recorded.