A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Smartphones. Facebook. Reality TV. It’s easy to look at our changing world and come to the following conclusion: we’re all getting stupid. That’s not the case. In fact, over the last century, the average Australian IQ has dramatically increased. Compared to Australians who lived 100 years ago, we’re a nation of geniuses. But now, some [...]
The video showed the woman in a pink off-the-shoulder top, sitting on a bed, smiling a convincing smile. It was her face. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else's body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd [...]
Research published this year suggests one in seven teenagers have sent explicit texts and one in four have received them. It prompted the Australian Medical Association to overhaul its youth outreach program, Dr YES (Youth Education Session), to include more up-to-date information about sexting and health. The program involves medical students visiting high schools for [...]
What drives you to Facebook? News? Games? Feedback on your posts? The chance to meet new friends? If any of these hit home, you might have a Facebook dependency. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, says Amber Ferris, an assistant professor of communication at The University of Akron's Wayne College. Ferris, who studies Facebook [...]
Do teenagers who frequent Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites perform worse academically? Scientists from Germany have looked into these worries. "Concerns regarding the allegedly disastrous consequences of social networking sites on school performance are unfounded," says Professor Markus Appel, a psychologist who holds the Chair of Media Communication at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) [...]
Debbie Vitany is fighting a losing battle against Fortnite. Her 17-year-old son, Carson, has been logging 12 hours a day on the video game, searching for weapons and resources in a post-apocalyptic world where the goal is being the last person standing. Teachers complain he falls asleep in class and his grades have plummeted. "We'd [...]
Children have endless access to video games via their devices and consoles, and for many it has become a key activity in their daily routine. According to the Digital Australia Report 2018, an astounding 97 per cent of homes with children have access to computer games and 60 per cent of households have five or [...]
For 17-year-old Mary Amanuel, from London, it happened in Tesco. “We were in year 7,” she remembers, “and my friend had made an Instagram account. As we were buying stuff, she was counting the amounts of likes she’d got on a post. ‘Oooh, 40 likes. 42 likes.’ I just thought: ‘This is ridiculous.’” Isabelle, an 18-year-old student [...]
Sexting among teens could be considered legal in some cases under new laws aimed to reduce the risk of consenting children being convicted of possessing child pornography. The changes will reduce the risk that children engaging in "normal sexual development and experimentation among teenagers" becoming criminalised, the Government said. The laws also provide a "similar [...]
Newington College has joined a growing number of schools banning mobile phones, saying they lead to lower concentration, higher stress and "warped views on reality". The inner west school told students to keep phones in their lockers from the beginning of term four after an attempt to encourage boys to use them responsibly failed. But [...]
