Social media awareness as a critical factor in the mental health of our children and young people: a structured intervention

My career to date has been dedicated to championing the significant benefits that technology can bring to people’s lives, particularly the lives of children and young people. We live in an age where global communication is a daily reality, anyone with a smartphone has constant access to the world’s ever-growing knowledge banks, and the imaginative use of technology in classrooms can give learners unparalleled access to the wonders of the world (and beyond!).  We are able to immerse ourselves in experiences that only a generation ago would have been limited to the pages of a book in the library, or a structured documentary on television.

Used as it is intended, social media is a force for good, connecting families and friends who are geographically distant, or giving access to the realities of living in other unfamiliar regions of the world: who among us would not want children and young people to have such opportunities? But this technology does not come without latent peril.  One such peril is the potential for harm that can be caused to persons who may not have the life-experience or maturity to deal with some of the content that can be encountered, content sometimes created with the very intention of causing harm. This is where we as educated adults working with children and young people can have the most positive impact.

One approach that we in the Carnegie School of Education have taken is to embed reference points and objectives into the key competencies of our incredibly successful School Mental Health Award developmental framework. Through our work with the Molly Rose Foundation, we have recently updated the Award to incorporate three areas of development for schools to work towards, under the key competencies of staff professional development and learning, support for pupils, and leadership and strategy to develop their organisational intelligence around, and their organisational response to the potential dangers of social media within the school community.  Thus, it is immediately obvious that in order to meet these criteria, educators must offer a far more structured approach to social media understanding than simply the provision of additional lessons or learning content.

Staff professional Development and Learning

Within this competency of the award, schools will demonstrate that ‘Staff CPD opportunities are developed and mapped, to include relevant competencies for all staff, and also the development of specialist points of contact (SPOCs) staff who are supported to provide additional guidance within school.’  The reasons for this criteria are important: educators need to feel that they are supported in their endeavours, and this is a field which a good many will justifiably not feel confident.  The identification of a specialist point of contact within every school additionally adds a further layer of support for all, whilst providing opportunities for an individual to develop a pivotal and rich knowledge base.

Support for Pupils

Within the competency of providing support for pupils, schools should ensure that ‘Pupils understand and have up-to-date knowledge about where they can receive support relating to adverse experiences suffered in the digital context.’ Here, the work of the afore-mentioned SPOC and digitally developed educators becomes evident with the creation of a curriculum that helps them to understand and navigate the realities of social media.  For instance, ensuring that learners (and educators!) are aware of how algorithms are utilised by social media companies to direct content to individual users is key.  We are all targeted by marketeers and advertisements online, based around the things that we have been ‘audited’ looking at online: how often do you access a website only to be bombarded by links to a product that you were looking at on an online auction site last week?  But as we know, this can be overwhelming for children and young people, particularly if the subject of their previous activity is adult in nature, or even illegal – the ensuing bombardment can make them feel that this is the reality and entirety of the world around them.  So, ensuring that learners are at least aware of the mechanisms of social media can lessen these impacts.   

Leadership and Strategy

In the competency of Leadership & Strategy, it now requires that ‘Senior leaders ensure that regular environmental scanning is undertaken around the latest trends in social media and other digital platforms, to ensure that the school population is best prepared to deal with emerging threats to the wellbeing of users.’  Again, we know that without the involvement and ‘buy-in’ of senior leadership, initiatives such as this will rarely survive the academic year.  However, by ensuring that school leadership are cognate with the issues, and that social media is a focus for School Leadership Teams and Governance Boards, the attention of the whole school community can be trained on their own bespoke responses to this growing issue in the lives of our young people.