A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
At the beginning of this year, I was using my iPhone to browse new titles on Amazon when I saw the cover of “How to Break Up With Your Phone” by Catherine Price. I downloaded it on Kindle because I genuinely wanted to reduce my smartphone use, but also because I thought it would be [...]
For young adults, social media may not be so social after all. Among people in that age group, heavy use of platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram was associated with feelings of social isolation, a study finds. The results surprised study co-author Brian Primack. "It's social media, so aren't people going to be socially [...]
Social media monitoring apps targeting programs like Facebook and Instagram are revealing alarming habitual behaviour and extreme levels of smart phone use. You may not realise it, but you are probably reaching for your smart phone with high frequency. It just takes a free app to give you the cold, hard statistics. "If you ask [...]
Have you found yourself checking email at dinner, or skipping from book to screen, unable to focus? The closer the world gets to our fingertips, the more we stand to lose. Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that, unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to [...]
Children now spend more time on the internet than watching television, according to a survey of young Australians aged six to 13. In 2016 kids spent an average of 12 hours a week online compared to 10.5 hours spent in front of the TV. The online figure is nearly double the time reported in 2008 [...]
Scene One: It’s December 2015, in Melbourne, and the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital releases the results of its first Australian Child Health Poll. Excessive screen time has emerged as the top ‘big problem’ for the health of Australian children and teenagers ahead of obesity; not enough physical activity; unhealthy diet; bullying; illegal drug use; family [...]
As schools break up for the year, police and experts have warned parents to be on guard for cyber bullying, which spikes during the holidays. Police regularly witness an increase in cyber bullying among children when they're off school. "During school holidays kids have more access to, and more time with, the technology," NSW Police Acting [...]
Flickr Images Even as we are addicted to checking our Facebook or Twitter feeds and compulsively respond to the familiar ding of new email, we worry about its negative impacts. Cyber bullying, sexting, and victimisation occur. We are bombarded with images of friends who seemingly lead lives far more glamorous than our own. [...]
Flickr Images Do your work responsibilities and recreational choices involve a lot of computer use? Are you in the habit of updating social media through the day? Are you finding it weirdly difficult to concentrate on this paragraph? If the answer to all three questions was in the affirmative, this might not be [...]
Pixabay Images Parents have been struggling to contain their child's technology use to the recommended screen limit of two-hours-a-day. With schoolwork, homework, communication, social media and fun, that limit doesn't acknowledge our new reality. But the American Academy of Pediatricians's new guidelines acknowledge the dramatic change in our device use and the need for children to use technology [...]
