Leadership Dislikes: Slow moving legislation…

Schools do rules. Parents do principles. Government (regardless of political leaning) needs to regulate.

Schools do rules

Governments have put schools in charge of pupils’ online safety. It is literally in the job description. Schools do not shirk that responsibility. I would be confident that Croydon High pupils would be able to recite good online safety rules if you were to ask them. The point about online harm, however, is that it is no longer the case that an individual can follow rules and keep themselves safe.  This is an outdated view. As a former teacher of Breck Bednar, I have been privy to the educational journey brought about by his horrific grooming and murder as well as the subsequent excellent work by the Breck Bednar Foundation. Schools and pupils have learnt these lessons, and there are regular reminders to pupils about direct online dangers even before they reach secondary school, and these embed themselves at a young age.

It is not the sole method of online harm, however.

To provide an analogy, pupils are not crossing the road and deciding if the car(s) are a safe distance away. Rather, the road is moving, the cars appear out of thin air, the length of a pupil’s stride appears to change with each step they take, and drones fly above their head tracking their every move and dropping hazards onto them at a time judged to be the most impactful.

I refer to the power of the crowd, and the algorithm. Cyber-bullying is a much more persistent form of bullying than a barbed comment in the playground, intended to sting in the heat of the moment and delivered with venom. Instead, throwaway comments leave victims wondering as to the genuine feelings of their contemporaries, and of course there is direct bullying including the re-posting of embarrassing/doctored photos etc. The significant difference is that the online victim re-visits the unkindness several times, sometimes through others liking/re-posting, and sometimes of their own will, to try to find meaning or understand the bully.

Furthermore, online, young people using perfectly innocent search terms, will listen to normal music and attempt to connect with their real-life friends. However, because every click of it is tracked, and because children follow anything bright and flashing or with the picture of a cat on it, they can be funnelled down ever more extreme tunnels of content or, inexcusably, directly sent harmful content based on the fact that other users shared a similar set of clicks and hover time as them. This last point was so dreadfully demonstrated in the case of Mollie Russell, and companies admitted as much when the review into her death was published earlier this year.

Tough to see how schools have the power to stop the internet.

Parents do principles

Decisions about how to parent are individual to each family, but it does feel like those decisions are now dictated far more than they may previously have been. In addition, constraints on parental impact and role modelling are in play.

In the face of the tidal wave of technological innovation and revolution, the ability to instil principles in the way they might wish to has become more and more challenging for parents. Regrettably, education’s best response to the recent pandemic also contributed to parental impotence, demanding that pupils spend hours on screens. Each sector was doing what it thought best at the time, of course, and in the moment, online learning was a complete necessity, both for educational and socio-emotional progress. However, resetting the boundary expectations in the home, and with schools harnessing the best bits of online learning, screen time is inevitably “up”. Role-modelling was also dealt a cruel blow. For those who managed the impossible pre-2020 of separating work life from home life, suddenly working from home meant children witnessed parents glued to the very screen they were previously forbidden. Everything required parents to interact with a screen, the shopping, work, booking the covid tests, connecting with friends, even online exercise classes.

More screen time, more clicks, more hovers, more algorithmic data… on both pupils and parents.

Tough to see how parental principles can withstand the big data which is now available to power the content directed at their children, or the screentime covid hangover.

Government (regardless of political leaning) needs to regulate  

The headline that sparked this particular “Leadership Dislikes” was:

Proposed amendments to the Online Safety Bill will give bereaved parents access to their dead children’s social media accounts, with the heads of social media companies required by law to release the data or face fines and a possible prison sentence. By Charles Hymas, The Telegraph.

The Online Harms White Paper was published in 2019. The year 2022 is fast drawing to a close.

In that time, an intense 18-month period has driven teenagers, and pre-teens towards technology. The introduction of social media in 2009 was followed by an increase in self-harm among young girls.  The covid pandemic has been followed by a mental health slump amongst young people nationally.

Of course, I fully support the proposed amendments referenced in Mr Hymas’s article; it follows unthinkable damage to the family, friends and community who are seeking such tragic information. I am pleased that, in principle, the UK government is taking steps with an end goal of making the online world safer for children. It is one area of life which has, for many years been an indisputable determining factor in the level of happiness and wellbeing of children.

My hope, however, is that the rest of the Bill grows more teeth as it moves through its interminable amendment phases.

Will the Bill make a dent in the ability to send a disappearing message?

Will the Bill prevent the suggestion of inappropriate content to impressionable young people?

Will the Bill provide fuller access to information, enabling law enforcement agencies to track harassing images/messages more effectively and to prevent young people sending them without consequence?

Social media needs regulation. I see it used well every day and none of the things young people gain and enjoy through social media are at risk by regulating it. Conversely, to not regulate it, leaves young people as targets, literally, of advertising, of algorithms, of bullying and harassment.

As always, I am encouraged by the examples of youth behaviour that I see around me every day here in school. Our young people are well informed; they recognise the dangers, they acknowledge the damage and as the various activities surrounding any-bullying week demonstrated, they are ready to call it out. But, on its own, it will never be enough.

Schools can educate. Parents can guide. I would argue that only Government has the real power to safeguard.

P.S. For those parents still fighting the good fight in terms of managing digital consumption, the following additional reading might be useful.

https://www.digitalfamiliescounselling.com.au/blog/2014/05/you-are-the-worst-parent-ever

Mr King

Deputy Head (Pastoral)