A little thought experiment: how much time this week did you spend thinking about your appearance? And how much time did you spend, voluntarily, thinking about the health of your memory? For many of us, the answer can be summed up in one sentence: a lot for the former, zero for the latter. And this imbalance is no coincidence; it is largely manufactured.
An attention massively turned toward the body
The figures are definitive. A vast international study conducted in 2019-2020 (1) involving more than 21,000 young people aged 10 to 17 in six countries showed that only 45% of them were satisfied with their body image and that this dissatisfaction was directly linked to the time spent daily on social media.
A systematic review (2) covering 30 studies and more than 31,000 adolescents confirms the link between social media use and deteriorating body image, with an even more marked effect when usage is centered on appearance (fashion accounts, fitness, filters).
In other words, from the age of 10-12, a huge portion of a child's mental attention is already gripped by the question, "does my body meet the norm?", actively maintained by platforms that literally have a commercial interest in capturing that attention.
And meanwhile, memory waits for its turn
What is striking is the asymmetry.
No one sells a filter to "improve" their working memory with a click.
No one scrolls through a feed dedicated to cognitive training between two advertisements.
Memory has no lobby, yet it is just as much—if not more—a factor in academic success, self-confidence in learning, and the ability to feel competent when facing a new task.
We could summarize it coldly: we have collectively organized hyper-vigilance regarding appearance and near-negligence regarding cognition.
Not out of malice, simply because one sells very well, and the other does not sell at all (or poorly).
Redirecting attention, without turning it into a new battle
Body image is a real issue, and young people did not choose to be exposed to it on a loop. The question is rather: where else could we reinvest some of this attention? And there is an option that is as simple as it is effective: learning a language.
Language learning: training memory differently
Learning a second language is one of the few activities that simultaneously engages working memory, selective attention, and inhibitory control: the same executive functions that school seeks to develop, often with difficulty. For a young child, bilingual learning is not an extra effort; it is continuous cognitive stimulation, integrated into daily life as naturally as play.
Concretely, juggling two languages forces the brain to select, filter, and memorize with every sentence spoken and every word searched for. It is not formal training, it is invisible training. And that is precisely where its strength lies: memory is strengthened without the child feeling like they are "working."
Becoming bilingual is the new black
If we wish to invest time, money, and energy in everything that promises to make our children more confident, more competent, and more ready for the world: bilingualism has been silently checking all those boxes for decades. It is not a trend. It is just that we are starting to realize it.
(1) : Body Weight Perceptions Among Youth From 6 Countries and Associations With Social Media Use: Findings From the International Food Policy Study
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212267224005173
(2) : The link between social media use and body image in adolescents: a systematic review of the literature.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013700621002189
Supporting your child's bilingualism daily
If you are looking for concrete tools to nurture your child's languages at home, we have created several resources designed for bilingual families:
- MEMORA : our bilingual memory card game, available in French-English, French-Turkish, and French-Spanish. A fun tool to learn and review vocabulary in both languages, starting from age 3.
- Bilingual Happy Families (7 Families) : the classic game revisited in French-English, French-Turkish, and French-Spanish to play as a family while naturally reinforcing vocabulary.
- The guide to family bilingualism: a practical guide to understanding how bilingualism works in children and how best to support it on a daily basis.
- Our bilingual crossword puzzles! Two languages in every grid, 35 grids, over 700 words, and difficulty that increases gradually throughout the pages (16+ years)
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