A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
A 15-year-old boy confided in me after I addressed his class at a Sydney school last year. He cried as he told me he had been using porn since the age of nine. He didn’t have a social life, had few friends, had never had a girlfriend. His life revolved around online porn. He wanted [...]
If you can use your strengths in the service of something greater than yourself, many psychologists will tell you that this is a key predictor of wellbeing. They refer to it as having a sense of purpose or meaning. Recently I’ve been working with schools to push their thinking in this regard. What [...]
With the younger generation's growing access to the internet, it probably comes as no surprise that many children are viewing pornography. But what may surprise you, is the reason why they're watching. Some sexuality health experts are suggesting many Australian young people are using pornography as a "how to" manual for having sex. In Australia [...]
Never mind that, why do adults tweet? I’m an avid member of the Twitterati… and I tend to roll my eyes when I hear people dismissing it as nothing more than a window into the narcissistic lives of celebrities. A recent piece of research by the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria (YACVic) revealed the [...]
Strict guidelines proposed for the sale of alcohol in NSW have been watered down to remove bans on the use of celebrities who appeal to under-18s in promotions and mention of specific events targeting women after intense lobbying from the industry. New guidelines released by the NSW government on Thursday morning show sections pertaining to [...]
A great deal of parenting is timeless, but some things change so fast you can barely blink, and one of those is the rise of internet porn. For parents of both boys and girls, this is creating a surge of new dilemmas to solve. via How to raise boys in the era of internet porn.
Girl Mag Watch Girlfriend July 2013 Melinda Tankard Reist In my talks in schools around the country, I am told distressing stories of alcohol-related harm. Violence, sexual assault, damage to physical and mental health. My friend and colleague Paul Dillon, a drug educator with 25 years experience and founder of Drug and Alcohol Research and [...]
I have a saying that my teaching colleagues will be able to appreciate. Interesting kids have very interesting parents. I spent the past two years resisting invitations from schools to give parent talks. My reasoning was that whilst after 15+ years teaching, I can speak with some authority with regards to working with school students, [...]
It’s dreamy and slow; The Virgin Suicides if it were set against Sydney’s beaches. Unfortunately, this isn’t a promo shoot about wistful ingenues overcome by the suburban ennui of their own lives - if that’s what Roxy were going for, they’ve completely missed the mark. In the promo, a faceless woman (rumoured to be five [...]
SPARX — a fantasy role-playing game designed by the University of Auckland to teach young people with depression how to manage and overcome their condition — has found a publisher and distributor, it was announced today. The game first came to the attention of the public when a clinical trial involving it was published in [...]
