A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
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 [...]
The sun-drenched beaches of Exuma gleamed as brightly as the skin of the world-famous supermodels stretched out on yachts or dancing around flickering fires in the promotional video for Fyre, the glamorous music festival turned shambles turned scam that became the subject of the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. The likes [...]
The number of young people in the UK who say they do not believe that life is worth living has doubled in the last decade, amid a sense of overwhelming pressure from social media which is driving feelings of inadequacy, new research suggests. In 2009, only 9% of 16-25-year-olds disagreed with the statement that “life [...]
