To agree with Esther Ghey?

[ProfessorPeppy]

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/12/i-want-to-make-things-better-esther-ghey-on-her-hopes-for-online-reform

I’m a teacher in a secondary school. I believe that the massive uptick in social problems we are experiencing in schools results from unfettered smartphone use and access to social media. School refusal, eating disorders, gender identity issues, self harm, anxiety, depression. ASD/ADHD seems to be a common underlying starting point for such vulnerabilities, but neurotypical children are also adversely affected. So many of the children I teach say things like, ‘everybody is looking at me in class, it makes me anxious’ - surely this results from a life spent on social media? Cameras on phones mean that anybody can be recorded/broadcast themselves at the click of a button, perhaps without their permission.

DS1 is 11 and about to start secondary school. He doesn’t have a phone…yet. He has an ASD/ADHD dual diagnosis and is medicated. I can clearly see that he might be vulnerable to the adverse effects of smartphone access, so I’m thinking v carefully about my next steps.

YABU: these problems have always existed for young people, and this has nothing to do with smartphones/social media.

YANBU: smartphones/social media have amplified these problems, especially for ND young people.

It’s not that easy to not let them have phones past 11. Payment, travel cards, appointments, loyalty cards, homework, maps, all social interaction…..is done on phones. Those without a smartphone at 11 will be hugely impacted which is the last thing you want with a ND teen struggling to fit in.

Brianna was on the ASD spectrum - that was never brought up in relation to her gender issues, was it?

@MILTOBE Those of us ‘in the know’ (teachers, social workers, youth workers) are hyper-aware of the links between ASD/ADHD and gender/anorexia/self harm. It’s linked to cognitive inflexibility., sensory issues etc.

This thread isn’t about her gender.

This.

Also, education on emotions, when done properly, will usually include the skill to work out when emotions are over the top or inappropriate and how to regulate them. It’s not what people seem to think, which is unfettered diving in to feelings and drowning in them, and basing decisions solely on emotions.

Yes, there needs to be enough focus on looking outwards, not just on the self, but squashing down emotions and/or not being able to recognise what you’re feeling or how to process it is not healthy, not the way to cure these problems.

The thing is that schools will not have the budget or time to do this properly within the curriculum, therapy is expensive and many parents themselves don’t have the mindfulness or emotional regulation skills to teach them to their kids. Social media just compounds this.

Yes, of course. It's been discussed on here many many times and we are all "in the know".

@T00manymugs No, it isn’t, you’re right, however gender identity is one piece of this awful puzzle. Gender issues are highly correlated with vulnerable (ND) children, exacerbated by social media. ND is also a factor in eating disorders and self-harm, which can be amplified by social media.

Scarlett had a bedroom full of very disturbing things, notes included. Read the information available and you'll see two children who had issues that were allowed and in Eddie's case, encouraged. I have a now adult DD, who is autistic and went Goth/dark, it needs navigating and involvement. While I'd look at knives/weapons in shops, they didn't get purchased. Both the killers were neglected, help not sought etc. As I said, I see the sexual obsession starting in kids around me and rather than parent, they are left to it. Ther ipads allow access to the dark Web. Ester knew immediately who the killers would be. O agree and practice mindfulness. I think everyone should meditate. You had an eating disorder, yet didn't have SM?

Esther isn’t discussing her gender.

I think parenting teens gets more difficult every year. Those parents with adult children will have had a far easy parenting journey than those parenting teens now and unless you’re in it you have no idea.

@ProfessorPeppy

‘everybody is looking at me in class, it makes me anxious’

I felt like that at school, but that was 40 years ago long before Smart Phones!

So true. Schools and teachers have put homework, homework apps, worksheets, homework planners, etc., on the internet, so pupils need access to the internet these days! Certainly they did at my son's school. They were also encouraged to get out their phones to take pictures of the white board, and take videos of science experiments, etc. Add into that apps for bus/train season tickets, an app to pay for school lunches, etc. I just don't see how secondary school children can operate without a smartphone!

Yes I felt like that too. It must be horrific now. Always worrying who is taking your picture or videoing you, seeing the perfect face and body ad nauseum, addictive apps for weight, health everything, needing to be seen to be seen, seeing what all your peers are doing, continual updates and groups you’re either in or not pinging or not pinging…..

Brains are still developing until 25. I dread the future . We’re already seeing the first generation who know no other life except this struggling massively. We don’t have the resources to pick up all the pieces and really do need to do something. Urgently!

I just read the article and agree 100%.

My DD experienced online bullying and its extremely invasive, i must say i had no idea the depths to which children will sink too to bully someone, luckily we moved schools and it stopped, the new school had far stricter policies and did a form of Mindfulness, they also banned the use of mb phones during the day.

The previous school was a bullies paradise.

We can all wish parents parents did x y or z but they don't, so the next step is the school or you let bad behaviour carry on.

I think that a lot of adults in authority have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager and grow up in general.
”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
It’s ok that adults can not fix the uncertainties of growing up. We become stable adults because we go through the growing up experience and discover ourselves. It is often crap being a teen because of physical changes like hormones but it’s not something that can be fixed. Feeling worried or awkward is a common enough experience even amongst the NT who are fortunate to grow out of it with some life experience and age.
While I agree that smartphones amplify problems for some, it is often accompanied by naive or bad parenting too. The internet can not be scrapped or controlled as it’s international and makes money for the very rich. We can take individual responsibility to guide and filter it for our own kids to some extent but it’s not going to go anywhere. Has Esther Ghey commented on how she deals with the Internet with Brianna’s siblings? Has her approach changed in light of what happened to Brianna?

I absolutely agree that children need to get off their phones and spend more time in reality, thinking outside of themselves and their inner worlds. However, this might be controversial but I feel like Esther Ghey is failing to join some dots here and acknowledge the elephant in the conversation, which is the impact of online grooming in convincing children that they are trans.

These problems have always existed, and they've been amplified by phone use.

I think we need to get away from Esther Ghey. We all feel for her tragedy, but people in those circumstances are often the least able to objectively view the problem.

There is overwhemling evidence that smartphones and social media have caused an epidemic of poor attention in everyone, not just children. The tools to manage that simply won't work for young people attempting to learn this stuff, and who in many cases can't see how it's adversely affecting them. Many young people really believe they can attend to six apps/screens at once, and Big Tech loves that because it can serve them six times as many adverts.

There are other issues too: poor diet, lack of exercise and poor sleep are also to blame.

ADHD may have been underdiagnosed in the past but not to the extent that explains current levels. An ONS study found that financial problems at home led to a 50% rise in diagnosis, and a serious illness in the family increases that to 75%. Exploring those issues with well resourced professionals and looking at kids' environment would work much better than mass medication.

It's multifactorial and complex. Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus gives an excellent overview, if you have enough attention to actually read a book.

@CranfordScones to touch on last point, READING…Does silent reading still happen in Primary schools? We had silent reading for about an hour a day. It was an escape. A wonderful escape, we were addicted, to paper, books.

Those ‘star reader’ type quizzes to further underpin & encourage reading, still going on?

I think what children have access to on the internet is very scary. You don't even need the dark web to be able to see torture videos or other gory stuff. Even if you have parental controls on your child's phone you can guarantee that another child won't.

I remember when my child was at school 14 years ago and there was a video doing the rounds showing someone being killed, I don't think it was in the UK. I don't know if the video was fake. The problem is that when children are exposed to this sort of stuff they eventually become desensitized to it.

I totally disagree with you. What has happened to my children was absolutely not down to bad parenting. We’ve had so many professionals tell us that.

We are/ were very proactive parents. There were boundaries in place, tech was monitored and we were quite tech savvy at the time.

It could happen to anyone.

Stop on.

Yep, I agree. This obsession with introspection and feelings being king has lead to a lot of this IMO.

I don't think you fully understand what mindfulness is.

I know. The utter ignorance shown by some is why we’re in this mess.

Shouldn’t we be trying to keep teens busier, sports, clubs, etc? A ‘good’ teen is a physically tired teen. Far less room for rumination. We had youth club twice a week, Brownies, chess club, cookery, etc.

I'd respectfully suggest you don't quite understand the concept of mindfulness then.

I'm not the poster this was addressed to, but I had agreed with them that mindfulness in schools might not be the way forward. I do understand the concept of it, and have practised it myself. However, in my long experience of schools and the way they introduce and then ditch new initiatives and well-being ideas, it's very unlikely that mindfulness would actually be taught and used properly. It would most likely be a vague and yes, possibly navel-gazing 'Now let's all be a but more mindful of our feelings' thing.