Navigating the Digital Landscape
Monday 30 September 2024
Dr Nathan Wilson, St Leonard’s College Psychologist and Counselling Team Leader highlights helpful strategies and resources for parents in a tech-driven world.
“ This is such a challenge. We have followed the advice so far, but this is still so tricky.” – Year 7 Parent
As counsellors, this is representative of the sort of comments we hear a lot from parents. One of the challenges that all parents from ELC to Year 12 must grapple with today is how they help guide their child’s relationship with technology.
Parents and guardians are faced with the challenge of helping young people navigate an evolving and shifting landscape of smart devices, constant connectivity, social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms and streaming services. In this space, parents need to be alert to the outright dangers that do lurk online as well as deal with the day-to-day pressures that come with digital or “phone-based” childhood and adolescence.
From our position in the world of student wellbeing, we need to point out that the dangers are real and do occur. The combination of many devices with cameras and constant connectivity ends up leaving all young people constantly walking close to a digital precipice. At times, the fall can be sudden and hard, where a brief period of loneliness, boredom or curiosity leads a young person who is having a relatively “routine” existence into other worlds that are complex, distressing and, at times, dangerous. Given that studies show nearly half of all adolescents admit to sharing an intimate image, more than half receive them, and nearly all have received a request for one, many young people are going to be walking close to this edge at times. And this doesn’t even touch on the growing issue of unintentional exposure to pornography, which is happening at increasingly younger ages.
As well as outright dangers, there are the more day-to-day challenges for parents such as managing device usage and their children’s desire for constant connectivity. Adolescents now spend a significant amount of time in a digital space that can be viewed as an “almostˮ world, offering them a kind of personal space or “room of their ownˮ (Frankel, 2023). This “almost” world is a complex, shape-shifting mixture of public and private worlds, of comfort and safety, along with exploration and excitement. Ask an adolescent to move out of this “room of their own” and into the world that exists outside of it, and they are going to be reluctant to do it. You will likely already be facing the eye-rolls, irritability and annoyance as you try to do this. They will quickly get back to existing as much as they can in this “roomˮ as soon as possible. The long-term impacts of this digital living on the adolescent psyche and identity development are not yet well understood. However, it is thought they make the already challenging process of development into the adult world even more complex. Given the pull of devices on young people, parents are going to have to put in place some structures to help their young people do enough of the basics, such as sleep, eat, move, and do some homework.
Below are five links to some of the online resources that are available to assist parents grapple with these technology challenges. Several of these were mentioned at the Year 7 Family Technology Evening held in June. At this event, families worked through a range of scenarios relating to the pressing issues of technology and social media during the Middle School years. In addition to the resources below, St Leonard’s College parents also have access to several useful video guides on SchoolTV, which is available via our College intranet – STL Link.
· Raising Children Network – Parent Advice for Online Safety
· eSafety Controls – Advice on Parental Controls
· It’s Time We Talked – Useful Resources for Parents on Porn
· The Parents Website – Hosted by ISV
· Common Sense Media – Parents Guide to Snapchat
By Dr Nathan Wilson, Psychologist and Counselling Team Leader