Even for a five-time Olympic champion, some fights are tougher than others. Faced with the screen addiction that threatens his children, Eden and Ysis, Teddy Riner decided to step up to the plate. Between strict rules at home and helplessness in the face of school tablets, the star judoka and his partner Luthna Plocus no longer hide their anger.
He has toppled mountains, and many gigantic adversaries. But combating the devastation that screens can wreak on young children poses a daunting challenge, even for a champion like Teddy Riner. The French superstar judoka, five-time Olympic champion (three individual titles, two team titles), leads a tireless fight to protect his two jewels, Eden (11 years old) and Ysis (7 years old) from the dangers that this addiction can pose.
“Now they have everything I didn’t want, tablets and computers,” he confided recently, as told by La Dépêche du Midi. So, at home, the rules are now very clear on the issue, as he told in the show “C à vous” on France 5, confiding that he had recently purchased, in agreement with his partner Luthna Plocus, a phone “without WiFi and without the possibility of going on social networks” for his son Eden. The goal: so that he can talk by SMS with his little fiancée.
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“And there, from one day to the next, I saw my son carrying around morning, noon and evening with his phone, and becoming addicted. I took it away from him,” he confides, revealing part of his family intimacy.
However, the family finds itself faced with a pitfall: the presence of work screens in the Eden school: computers, tablets… “With my wife, we are mad with rage! But we cannot fight against school” said the Guadeloupean, conceding that “we also had to live with the times”.
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Teddy Riner (36 years old) confides that when he saw his son magnetized to the screen of his phone, he finally took the cell phone away from him. “If we can protect our children, we must do it,” he says. “From the moment we put the phone on them, they lose those moments where they read all the time, they play board games, communication, that innocence… The advice I would give to parents: ‘Delay it as long as possible!’.”
