A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
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 [...]
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 [...]
By Rachelle Matheson What is resilience? It is the ability to ‘bounce back’ following a disappointment or adverse event. A child with good resilience generally has good social and emotional competencies for their age that help them name their emotions and their feelings, show good problem-solving capabilities and generally make good decisions. There have been [...]
It was the big tech equivalent of “drink responsibly” or the gambling industry’s “safer play”; the latest milestone in Silicon Valley’s year of apology. Earlier this month, Facebook and Instagram announced new tools for users to set time limits on their platforms, and a dashboard to monitor one’s daily use, following Google’s introduction of Digital [...]
Parents who require children to follow rules and keep a constant eye on their activities, endeavoring to know where they are, who they are with and what they are doing, run less risk of facing problems when their children enter adolescence, such as abuse of alcohol and other drugs. The likelihood of such problems becomes [...]
In the midst of my worst moments of anxiety and panic, I would focus incessantly on the physical sensation and fear that it was something serious and harmful. But, as I learned over time from several experts, my attention was directed on the wrong thing. What if I could shift my focus to something else – [...]
A University of Melbourne study shows that glancing at a grassy green roof for only 40 seconds markedly boosts concentration. The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, gave 150 students a boring, attention-sapping task. The students were asked to press a key as a series of numbers repeatedly flashed on a computer screen, [...]
It’s the tendency to put more attention, value and weight on negative comments and experience than on the positive. It’s human. We seem to be hardwired to do it. Some theorists suggest that our survival depended on it when we were living in primitive times. People who didn’t stay alert for saber-toothed tigers probably didn’t [...]
New research shows looking at cute images of baby animals may actually improve your work performance, inspiring more fine-tuned attention and careful behavior. Perhaps unsurprisingly this new study comes from researchers in Japan, where kawaii (Japanese for "cute") reigns. From the characters of "Hello Kitty" and "Pokémon's" Pikachu, cute creatures stir positive feelings, researchers say, [...]
