French president urges parents to keep teens at home as rioting spreads

French President Emmanuel Macron urged parents Friday to keep teenagers at home and proposed restrictions on social media to quell rioting spreading across France over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old driver that has resulted so far in the arrests of 875 people.

After a second crisis meeting with senior ministers, Macron maintained that social media platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok played a “considerable role” in fueling copycat acts of violence during this week's unrest.

Macron said his government would work with technology companies to establish procedures for “the removal of the most sensitive content.” He did not specify the content he had in mind but said, “I expect a spirit of responsibility from these platforms.” French authorities also plan to request, when “useful,” the identities "of those who use these social networks to call for disorder or exacerbate the violence,” the president said.

Macron said a third of the individuals arrested Thursday night were “young people, sometimes very young," and that “it's the parents' responsibility” to keep their children at home.

“We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them,” he said of rioters.

The French leader's remarks followed a third night of unrest across France since a police officer shot and killed the teenager Tuesday in the northwestern Paris suburb of Nanterre. Rioters erected barricades, lit fires and shot fireworks at police, who responded with tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades. Police said at least 200 police officers have been injured.

Macron's government has deployed 40,000 officers to restore order and make arrests over behavior he described as “unacceptable and unjustifiable.” He stopped short of announcing a state of emergency, a tactic used by a previous French government in 2005 to quell rioting after the accidental deaths of two boys while they fled police.