(source: The British International School Bratislava (BISB))
Most parents didn’t grow up with smart phones, the internet was a very different place and our lifestyles as children, a world away from the experiences of children nowadays. The questions to ask are: what impact has this digital world had on children’s brains, their experiences of the world and their general behaviours.
We lead busy lives, no more so than new mums and dads. The relief when the baby stops crying can feel huge, often gained through holding the baby, talking to them and generally showing them the attention they crave. Or parents could give them a YouTube video to watch, which probably also works to calm them in the short term.
When on a long journey, maybe doing the long drive down to Croatia in the summer, what easier way to a peaceful journey than to set the iPad up in the back seats and leave the adults to a good chat, listening to some 90’s rock classics! And even when on holiday, a nice siesta for the parents, while the children do a deep dive into Minecraft of watch someone on the other side of the world playing with slime.
How about in the evening at home, the news is on the TV and the adults need a bit of downtime. Children have the world at their fingertips, alone, upstairs in bedrooms, with the whole internet to explore, games to play with people from across the world, often talking to people they (and you) have never met.
Whilst the online world has enormous benefits for children, we should also be mindful of the considerable risks that children are exposed to when they are allowed unrestricted, unsupervised access to the internet. There is an analogy in the real world: imagine a highstreet with a pornography shop, an ‘extremist’ shop containing Nazi clothing and other extreme paraphenalia and a shop where sketchy adults hang around to talk to children when they come in. I’m sure, as parents, we would never allow our children onto such a high street, let alone into one of these shops. However, giving children unfettered access to the internet is, in effect, allowing them access to a world of pornography, extremism, and virtual liaisons with inappropriate people, all with very little oversight from responsible adults.
At The British International School Bratislava, we teach students about the dangers of online life. We give children strategies to navigate the online world and the skills to act if they do come across something that upsets them. I’m sure that parents also do the same at home, hoping that children won’t see or experience any of the things that are mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, in spite of all that we do as educators and parents; children, by their nature, are curious and will explore things, often forbidden things. Even more so, they are encouraged to be so by social media companies and the online industry as a whole. In the case of pornography, it probably won’t be children searching for it, that provides their 1st encounter, but rather, it will find them through a couple of innocuous clicks on certain websites. A sobering statistic is that the average age that children view pornography across the world is 12.
In recent years, social media has become as important to many children as real-world socialising. I wonder how many parents feel their children are safer in their bedrooms, perhaps on social media, compared to playing outside in the park or going to a shopping mall? The truth is that the ‘extreme highstreet’ doesn’t exist and life in Slovakia is abundantly safe, whereas the online world continues to pose dangers, espcecially when children are sucked into the vortex of social media. On the 20th November 2017, Molly Russell from the UK had dinner with her parents, the following day, she was found dead in her bed. Molly had taken her own life as a result of being bombarded by images and messages about self-harm and suicide on social media. There continues to be calls for social media companies to take more responsibility for what children see and to this effect in Australia there has been a ban on social media to under 16s.
The current Netflix drama, ‘Adolescence’ has opened many parents’ eyes to the impact of an extreme online culture that many adults don’t know about and don’t understand. In particular the rise of misogynistic influencers and Incel culture are having an impact on boys across the world. In ‘Adolesence’ the heart breaking final scene where the father is sitting in his son’s bedroom, distraut with grief and pain wondering how his ‘little boy’ could have been sucked into such a world of hate is incredibly moving. Although in this case the consequence of this misogyny was incredible, there is a scale of such behaviour and some children are engaged with this across the world.
This article is deliberately painting a shocking view of the dangers of the online world, however, it is not fake news, the risks are ever present and very real. The question is what can we do as adults to protect our children, to give them the skills to navigate these online dangers and if they do come across such content, to offer them a way out. In a recent Parent Academy lecture at The British International School Bratislava, we shared some vital approaches that we hope parents engage with:
Promote, open, honest, trusting communication with children
Have the difficult conversations. Children need love, understanding and support as well as boundaries. Encourage their ambitions, but don’t let them do exactly what they want, especially when it comes to online
Habitualise access to children's phones / social media accounts. Parents need to know what children are doing and accessing, as well as who with
Install ‘Parental controls’ on devices. Use the screentime limits, blocking of certain material filters (but also be aware that children often know how to circumvent these!)
Have a rule of ’no devices in bedrooms at night’ – nothing good happens when people take their phone to bed
Parents are the most important role models. If parents’ phone use is ‘unhealthy’ children may copy. Ditch that phone!
There are several other matters that haven’t been addressed in this article, such as electronic device addiction, gambling, extreme gaming, impact on eyesight and sleep disruption to name a few. But we hope that by acknowledging the risks that are present online, parents and schools can work together to build resilience to these risks and ultimately enable children to self-regulate their online lives. However, we must, as adults, take responsibility. After all, the children probably didn’t buy the devices with their own money, and also don’t pay for the broadband subscription themselves; it is we who have put these devices in their hands and given them online access. We must therefore do all we can to protect the most precious people in the world, both in the real world and in the virtual one.
Mark Hatherell is the Head of Secondary at The British International School Bratislava.
