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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 [...]
Increased digital participation has provided many positives for young people with disabilities, but greater potential risks can also be found lurking online for those who live with a disability, according to latest research from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. The potential risks – such as exposure to inappropriate content, excessive use, and image-based abuse [...]
Fitness and health tracking devices are becoming increasingly popular and a huge variety of wearable tech and apps now exist. Indeed, many smartphones and smart watches now come primed and ready to track our activity, sleep and nutrition. Research has for a long time highlighted how monitoring behaviours can help to lead to positive changes [...]
When it comes to excessive device use, there’s nothing wrong with young people – they’re just the first generation ever to grow up with unprecedented access to technology that's been specifically designed to exploit weaknesses in human psychology, says digital wellbeing and learning researcher and educator Dr Kristy Goodwin. According to Dr Goodwin, who spoke [...]
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 [...]
Education Minister James Merlino has announced a ban on mobile phone use in all Victorian public schools, effective from term one of 2020. The ban aims to counteract several effects of mobile phone use which schools have been struggling with. The most concerning is cyberbullying, which has been steadily increasing in Australian schools and in [...]
Focusing on Sydney teen Matthew, who has struggled with an addiction to computer games, this article examines how Australia is doing at treating gaming disorder following its official classification as a disorder by the World Health Organisation. We hear from Andrew Kinch, founder of Game Aware and former problem gamer, whose mission is to put [...]
You glance at your teen’s smartphone and see a text message light up the screen. Was that a sext you just saw? Questions flood your mind. Is this what kids are doing nowadays? Does this mean my child is having sex too? Sexting — the exchange of sexual messages, photographs or videos via technological devices [...]
If your child spends long hours playing video games, you might be worried they’re addicted. “Gaming disorder” is real, and has now been classified as a disease in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD). The new ICD will be adopted in 2022. If you are worried about your [...]
Both in Europe and the US, more than 90% of adolescents have their faces buried in screens before bed. Often, this comes at a cost to sleep. Frequent screen users are much more likely to report falling asleep later, sleeping less, and waking during the night. Such difficulties are linked not only to poorer academic [...]
