Fighting the cyberbullies: do we need to regulate our children’s digital lives?

When it comes to digital exposure, how much is too much for today’s teenagers? Fears about sexting, cyberbullying and access to inappropriate violent or pornographic images are being linked with other evidence pointing to communication disorders, spatial awareness issues, sleep disorders, stress and anxiety, eyesight damage and posture issues.

The blue light from screens has been linked to depression as well as insomnia. Rates of mental health issues experienced by schoolchildren are rocketing, with fingers being pointed at the pressures of social media or hours spent while online gaming.

Last week Joan Bakewell was found “loosely speculating” that narcissism was so rife among social media-obsessed young people that it could be linked to the rise in eating disorders, something for which she quickly apologised after there was a backlash of criticism from affected young people and their families.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has previously said that increases in hospital admissions for eating disorders could be due to social pressure made worse by online images. Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that rates of such illnesses are growing. The most common age for female admissions is now 15; nine times more females then males are being admitted to NHS wards.

A robust study by the World Health Organisation, published this month, found high levels of stress and anxiety among 11- to 15-year-olds, especially related to school. It also found that British young people were some of the most dissatisfied in the world.

The pop star Nicola Roberts, of the band Girls Aloud, has also intervened to highlight the government’s failure to understand the extent of the technology-spawned issue of “sexting”, pointing out that the time allocated to social and health education had dropped by a fifth in three years and still didn’t require children to be taught about the dangers of sexting.

“As the problem is getting bigger, the level of support needed is not growing with it,” Roberts, an ambassador for the children’s charity Barnardo’s, told the Times.

But as the debate continues about whether technology is damaging or enhancing young lives, the problem remains for grown-ups: should we – or can we – do anything about a stressed-out, sexed-up digital environment?

The phrase “digital natives” was coined in 2001 by US education consultant Marc Prensky in an attempt to show that the generation born into the web revolution was simply living life differently to the older generation of “digital immigrants”.

Dr Kimberly Young, the American founder of the Center for Internet Addiction, says she does believe that the push and pressures to stay online could be directly linked to stress.

“I think that digital natives know what they are doing with technology but less so with people,” she says. “We are more detached due to technology, and especially young children who use technology. It is just too soon and too young without developing their social skills. We are more isolated and, yes, stressed because of this constant need to stay connected.”

She has produced a diagnostic questionnaire for children to gauge the depth of their issues, and believes the number of internet addicts is steadily rising.

Strict parental control is key, according to Young. That is far from impossible to achieve, according to Kevin Avison, executive officer at the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, which actively keeps technology at bay, certainly during early years education. He said that the independent education group was attracting more and more parents who feared that over-exposure to online media early on is far from helpful.

“It’s very difficult to draw lines between social media and the less wholesome uses,” he says. “We try to have a critical attitude towards technology and encourage parents to at least set limits on use.

“We’re not about taking people away from the world in which we live, but children’s development is not helped by restricting their access to things like running around in nature and flexible playing, engaging with other people. There’s a great deal that can be lost if a child is brought up thinking there is only one main way of communication, using some form of device.”

Steiner schools argue for a different approach, introducing technology to the classroom at about the age of 12. “Children need to develop the wisdom to manipulate these devices when they come to use them, to understand how they work and therefore to make them work for them, rather than interfacing in a passive way,” Avison says. He added that parents were often guilty of setting poor examples with their use of tablets and phones. “Things are moving at a bewildering speed, so a device a child is using now will not be the ones they will be expected to use in a future workplace.”

Misplaced adult understanding of what children are dealing with is prevalent, according to Baroness Beeban Kidron, a film producer who was horrified by what she found while documenting young people’s online lives.

She has started a campaign to support young people to access technology responsibly, calling for a charter of “iRights “ for children to be able to delete their online profiles. The notion that children are comfortably surfing their lives through social media is very wrong, she says.

“This idea of the digital native in the bedroom taking down a fascist regime and building a billion-dollar company is a very attractive image, but actually if you look at the research, young people are on the lowest rung of digital opportunity,” she said.

Others are loathe to dump too many problems that are societal in nature at the door of the internet.

Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, said the implication that the internet is responsible for children’s problems ignores many of the alternative causes. “The increased exam pressure, for example, or expectations for success weighing children down,” she wrote in the Conversation.com.

“We should also consider the debate over the reality of what internet or gaming ‘addiction’ might really mean. The statistics are slight, to say the least, and don’t really bear out the public’s concerns.”

Blaming the internet for everything underplays all the potential benefits, for mental health or otherwise, from internet use, which may actually compensate for any drawbacks, she argues.

For example, the Children’s Commissioner for England reported that young people are seeking mental health advice online in preference to consulting their doctor or school nurse. And ChildLine reported that 82% of their children’s counselling sessions concerning suicide in 2013-14 were conducted through email or by means of a one-to-one online chat.

Technology itself has the potential to tackle some of the issues – cyberbullying can be spotted with software and apps are now being developed to allow parents to “time-out” their children’s devices. Technology is proving invaluable in the classroom in helping children who have learning difficulties, autism and any other disabilities.

Dr Kaska Porayska-Pomsta of the Institute of Education at University College London says that the term “digital native” is not a helpful one, suggesting that young people had an innate skill to deal with technology thanks to some kind of speeded up human evolution.

“We need to be looking at technology in a very different way. At how to use it as a means to support education,” she says. “These questions about how technology is impacting on young people are really only starting, they’re gathering momentum but there is a lot of work to be done yet.

“How will this blunt the next generation’s critical thinking, how will this hyper-connectivity change us as human beings? We are being changed at a very fundamental stage, as babies, by this technology. It’s vast and we’re only making baby steps in understanding it.”

TANGLED WEB

■ 46% of teachers say pupils are distracted by their mobile phones and other technology while in class

■ 41% of 11- to 19-year-olds report having seen something on the internet in the past year that worried or upset them

■ One in five pupils report that they have missed food or sleep to keep using their phone or other device

■ 72% of parents are happy for their kids to regularly use a smartphone or tablet

■ 64% of parents say that they worry about behavioural issues related to their children’s use of mobile phones, tablets or computers

■ Cyberbullying is a massive issue for young people. Reports suggest 50% to 80% of school-age children have experienced it in some form, 25% repeatedly, and well over half don’t tell their parents

Sources: NHS Choices; ChildLine; UK Safer Internet Centre; Parentally Challenged; 5Rights