Our children are being manipulated by addictive social media and the government must step in

Banner: Duty of Care

There has been a profound change in the landscape our children inhabit.

Slowly but surely, the mobile phones we gave them to keep them safe on the way to school have become all too compelling in a way which we never anticipated, with the potential to harm their mental and social wellbeing

Teenagers today are in a seemingly unbreakable relationship with their phones, and (more importantly) the social media apps on which they communicate throughout the day and often well into the night. Any parent will know that most kids are so attached to their phone that the device almost seems welded to their hand much of the time. They are addicted and, as with any addiction, breaking the cycle of behaviour is a complex, painful, but absolutely vital business.

In any debate around the effects of technology on our children, there are always cries that the buck stops with parents and schools, who of course have the most direct contact with our young people. As head of Wimbledon High School, I know all too well that educators and parents have a crucial part to play. We embrace technology for all the educational benefits it can bring to learning the sort of collaboration and skills our students will need for life and work in the 21st century.

Honest and open conversations about the pitfalls of social media and the need for balance give them the tools to navigate the digital world. And just as at Eton College - whose headmaster Simon Henderson spoke at the GDST summit this week about his decision to order year nine boys to hand over their phones at night because of concerns about the pressures of social media - and indeed most schools these days, Wimbledon High (a GDST school) has a strict no phones policy. Keeping phones firmly in lockers during the day allows space and time for the girls to throw themselves into all aspects of school life.   Evening workshops and talks on social media and digital awareness help to empower parents – we even teach them to code!

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Only last week, my newsletter to parents included a link to an article about how the algorithms behind social media sites were specifically designed to make the sites more addictive to use. We also provide a list of ten digital rules to help parents continue to limit screen time after school, all in an attempt to reduce the amount of time they spend agonising over pictures of friends on Snapchat, or flicking through photos on Instagram of a party they didn’t go to. Even for the most robust teenager, social media undoubtedly can breed anxiety, and make an already fragile adolescent self esteem even more vulnerable.

But the truth is that the potential negative impact of technology on our children is becoming ever more apparent – you could say the relationship between children and social media is now a public health concern. And just like all public health matters - be they childhood obesity, gambling addiction, or the effects of technology on the mental and physical health of our youth - a certain amount of responsibility must land in the government’s lap. It is up to government to exert pressure on the tech industry to behave more responsibly, and, where necessary, to legislate against the companies who use the psychology and tactics of the gambling industry to lure children in, and take up their time and attention.

Because that, of course, is really what is happening here, and it’s the point I try to impress on the parents at my school, that the product which has been commercialised, monetised and sold is our children’s time. Advertisers want their attention, and Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are the vehicles with which they get it. So the product which is being manipulated is our kids, and none of us can be comfortable with that.

The government can’t incentivise children to stop reaching for their phones every five minutes. But they can put pressure on the industry to design platforms with children’s wellbeing in mind. Some of the biggest issues facing young people today: sleep deprivation, isolation, as well as lack of time many spend outside and all the physical implications of that - all of them could be combated by limiting their access to social media.

Some would advocate enforcing age restrictions on these apps, but the problem with this is that until we have a way to verify age robustly in a digital age, there is almost no point in trying to enforce age limits. As of yet, we have no real mechanism for it - perhaps the brilliant technical minds behind this issue could turn their attention to this?

Duty of care puff

A better solution in the short term might be for the government to do some real research into the impact of smartphones and social media on child mental health, and child development. Understanding all this is crucial. Part of the problem, I think, has been that this particular revolution is being driven by the young, while older generations have scrambled to make sense of the issue. Children have always been two steps faster than their parents, but never more so than now. Yes, many of us dabble with social media, and we think we remember what it was like to be 13, but none of us have grown up in a time when so much of our self worth, our sense of value and self esteem is predicated on what we look like, and the image we build around our lives. That is the beast which social media feeds. And parents, educators and lawmakers must understand this.

The classes we offer parents range from managing your digital footprint to practical sessions on how to code. It’s my belief that if you can understand the technology behind social media, you can get control of it, if only in that you can sit your child down and explain to them how he or she is being used by the technology industry.

Ultimately, we must understand one crucial thing: that as much as it is transformative, liberating and essential (and can be a fantastic tool educationally), technology is also addictive. As addictive, in fact as gambling. The difference is that not everyone chooses to start gambling. But find me a teenager who doesn’t choose to pick up their phone and comment on something on Instagram every ten minutes. If my own children, and the brilliant, bright girls at Wimbledon High are anything to go by, you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful.

A parent writes:

‘At last schools are taking control… now it’s the tech giants’ turn to follow’

Words: Naomi Greenaway

News that Eton College’s headmaster Simon Henderson has banned phones at night for his Year 9 pupils to protect their mental wellbeing gets a ‘whoop whoop’ from me. It shouldn’t take guts to suggest that 13- and 14-year-old boys should not have access to their smartphones 24/7, but somehow it does. Mr Henderson admitted he was expecting ‘outrage’ when he announced his plan.

In reality, his pupils welcomed his intervention, which is a narrative I’ve heard over and over. Since writing a piece for this paper six months ago questioning the social norms around smartphones and social media usage, I’ve been plugged into a wave of action by both parents and schools. One deputy head teacher whose secondary school, Immanuel College, recently banned phones during the school day told me that despite the ‘Oh Miss!’ reaction in public, many of her pupils expressed relief to her in private.

Through the Facebook group, which I set up as a forum for parents to discuss these issues, I’ve learnt of several ‘parenting pacts’ -- where classes or year groups agree not to give phones and social media accounts until a specific age. Another conversation happening in my local area is the possibility of a communication curfew across several local schools. What bliss for parents and kids if the Whatsapp groups go quiet after 8.30pm or 9pm, so children can go to bed in the knowledge they are not missing out on the all-night social -- something experts are warning is leading to anxiety and insomnia.

At prospective open-evenings for secondary schools, of which I’ve been to a fair few of late, smartphones and social media is the one topic that parents always bring up. Head teachers who aren’t taking a strong stand find they have a lot of questions to get through at the end of the night. I’m yet to hear a parent complain because their daughter won’t be allowed to post a selfie on Insta during her lunch break.

Yet, despite there being more heroics from teachers and parents, our job is made harder as tech firms are constantly fine-tuning their technology to create ever more addictive platforms. Things like Snapchat’s ‘streaks’ (their popularity rewards) have been called out by parents and psychologists alike for whipping up social competitiveness, as has the much discussed Fortnite. This powerful tech, always one step ahead, can be too tough an opposition for even the most adept parents and teachers. Parents and teachers can go so far in setting boundaries, but as is being highlighted by this newspaper’s Duty of Care campaign, what’s really needed is for tech giants to start playing their part in what is fast becoming a public health issue. It’s time we see them starting to show some guts and change their behaviour too. 

For more discussion on this topic join Naomi's Facebook group 'Kids, phones, social media...and other dilemmas'