A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
In 1991, a lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco accused the company of targeting children with its “Joe Camel” ad campaign. The ads featured a cartoon camel character that the suit said lured children to become smokers. Six years later, the company settled out of court and voluntarily ended the Joe Camel campaign. This week, a [...]
Children and young people under 25 who are victims of cyberbullying are more than twice as likely to self-harm and enact suicidal behavior, according to a new study. The research also suggests that it is not just the victims of cyberbullying that are more vulnerable to suicidal behaviours, but the perpetrators themselves are at higher [...]
There is research that demonstrates that most everything you do on a screen is correlated with unhappiness, Jean Twenge told me when I first asked her whether we're raising digital monsters. Twenge, a professor of psychology and the author of the book, iGen, also noted the exact opposite to be true. Most everything you do off [...]
Being a parent can be terrifying. You spend your days trying to protect tiny humans when every instinct in their body is telling them to rebel against your good advice. Toddlers have a meltdown when forced to hold hands while crossing the road and teenagers sulk when you tell them they cannot have a phone or [...]
Cybersecurity experts have recommended that the government increase the digital age of consent from 13 to 16 because of safety risks for children. They were “unequivocally” opposed to the Irish government’s position where children can sign legal agreements with online service providers at 13 and have their personal information sold on to third parties. An [...]
Emily Joyce was at a yoga retreat when she realised her memory was not what it used to be. "I was with a group of friends and we were trying to remember the name of a restaurant," says Joyce. "None of us had our phones and it took us so long to remember it." For [...]
I never realised just how damaging our obsession with smartphones and our switched-on lifestyle was, nor how addictive screen time was, until I put my teenagers on an extended digital detox. The results were swift and shocking, raising the question of just what is happening to the selfie generation and whether we have more to fear [...]
Angela Reynolds's daughter Ashley was a high school freshman in 2009 when a stranger calling himself "Captain Obvious," with a profile that made it look like he was a teenager, messaged her through social media. He claimed to to have nude pictures of her. Ashley ignored him at first, but he became more insistent, threatening [...]
In past decades, teenagers struggling to deal with their emotions might have coped by taking a razor blade to their forearm or extinguishing cigarettes on their skin. Today’s teens, products of the internet era, have found an additional outlet. Approximately 6% of adolescents between 12 and 17 years old engage in a practice known as [...]
Can you answer this question? Which of the following four activities is most popular with children - watching TV, going online, playing sport or reading books? According to Ofcom research carried out last year, ‘going online’ is the correct answer. But perhaps this comes as no surprise at all for many parents coming out of [...]
