A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
A Department of Education review of smartphone policies around the world has found that students manage to find "workarounds" when devices are banned at school - yet the NSW government has prohibited phones in primary schools. The Department's review of the evidence on phones in classrooms notes that schools across Australia and around the world [...]
Teenage boys as young as 16 are experiencing symptoms of erectile dysfunction due to excessively viewing violent and hardcore pornography, an expert has revealed. And the ready access to porn on every device at any time of the day is teaching dangerous lessons about what healthy sexual relationships should be like. Psychologist and writer Collett [...]
Think of an internet meme and you’ll probably smile. The most memorable viral images are usually funny, from Distracted Boyfriend to classics like Grumpy Cat. But some memes have a much more sinister meaning. They might look as innocuous as a frog, but are in fact symbols of hate. And as memes have become more [...]
Last week I was followed around the Internet by a pair of shoes. I had looked at them online as a gift for my father-in-law, but he didn’t like them, and neither did I. Yet no matter what site I visited, there they were, staring at me in their full moccasin glory. Digital advertising can [...]
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 [...]
