A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
The argument has raged back and forth in recent years on the presence and nature of a link between youth social media use and mental health outcomes. In an eight-year longitudinal study recently conducted by Brigham Young University, one finding stood out: the sheer amount of time spent using social media did not correlate to [...]
Reporting from Generation Next's Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People seminar 2019, EducationHQ's Sarah Duggan wrote an article to relate the key messages from Kristy Goodwin's presentation, 'Managing Attention Span in the Age of Digital Distraction'. Kristy's main takeaway is that the ability to focus is a skill in its own right, and in [...]
We’re much more likely to be hanging out on social media than at the watercooler these days. But just because we’re no longer face-to-face when we chat, doesn’t mean our communication is completely disembodied. Over the last three decades, psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists, along with researchers from other traditions, have come together to understand how [...]
Protecting children from harm online is high on the political agenda right now. The UK government has set out plans to make social media companies legally responsible for protecting users, and MPs have criticised social media platforms for relying on users to report abuse. This is a serious problem, especially if people who come across [...]
Ask a teen today how she communicates with her friends, and she’ll probably hold up her smartphone. Not that she actually calls her friends; it’s more likely that she texts them or messages them on social media. Today’s teens – the generation I call “iGen” that’s also called Gen Z – are constantly connected with [...]
The world is reeling in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Christchurch. The attack has also raised a number of side issues, including the ethics of broadcasting the live stream of the attack, which was later shared on other platforms. As social media is fast becoming the favoured news source among young people, concerns [...]
Generation Next ‘s first Student and Youth Wellbeing Program of 2019 was a huge success. The beautiful creative confines of the Casula Powerhouse Performing Arts Centre provided a backdrop for a day of wellbeing education. It wasn’t just the excellent students from local schools that got to participate, but also more than ten thousand teens [...]
From encouraging suicide to giving young people an unhealthy addiction to staring at smartphones, digital technology has been accused in recent days of doing more harm than good. On Tech Tent we explore the impact of the internet on our mental health - and meet two people with different solutions for dealing with stress. In [...]
The social media site Instagram has said it will remove all graphic self-harm images following the death of a British teenager. The parents of Molly Russell, 14, said she committed suicide in 2017 after she viewed distressing material about depression and suicide. Her family saw the posts when they inspected her Instagram use after her [...]
Not that long ago, the height of ambition for many children was to be a children's television presenter. Then there was a brief period when everyone wanted to be an X Factor star. Okay, we may mourn the days when children dreamt about becoming firemen and astronauts, but all of this sounds quaint now that [...]
