A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Most parents know what it's like to have to drag their child kicking and screaming – sometimes literally – away from a screen. Almost 70 per cent of parents have seen tantrums after taking their child's device away, according to a new survey, while about 40 per cent said using technology made their children more [...]
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 [...]
Fitness trackers and mental health apps could be doing more harm than good because they are not based on sound science, researchers have warned, comparing some health app developers to “snake oil salesmen of the 1860s”. Greg Hager, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said that in the absence of trials or scientific [...]
Despite fears of technology eating into our nap, we may be slumbering for longer than ever before and we may have misunderstood what sleep is for. They say that an elephant never forgets. It is also often stated that one of the functions of sleep is to consolidate memories. If both of those things were [...]
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 [...]
Any simple time-and-motion study in our homes, workplaces, shopping malls or transport hubs will show that the more time we spend with devices in the digital realm, the less time there is to spend with people in the human realm. At the same time, it's probable that constant online violence dulls us to real pain. [...]
Search engines and content providers could have a role to play in helping young people find the most reliable mental health resources online, research at the University of Strathclyde has found. Thousands of websites and apps relating to mental health are available but the study discovered that much of the most useful material was difficult [...]
Pixabay Images Recently a primary school in Brisbane informed its Prep (Foundation) parents that all of its students would be required to have an iPad for school and this would be done at the parent’s expense. Needless to say this raised much discussion and debate. As part of this discussion I found myself [...]
Pixabay Images I admit we were naive. We didn't quite get when computers entered their classrooms and their bedrooms ("the teacher said I have to do it online mum!"), that the Net – while holding incredible opportunities for learning – also opened up a whole new nefarious world of shallows and shoals, of [...]
Pixabay As many young adults now own a smartphone or tablet, there is a wealth of information at their fingertips and a limitless supply of social media messages, games, music and TV intruding into the sleep cycle. Evidence suggests that social media and smartphones can have a negative impact on our health with [...]
