High School is an exciting time for young people moving into Year 7, and it is a time often characterised by additional privileges and responsibilities.  One of these new freedoms is a young person’s first mobile phone and additional access to online gaming.  This is the starting point for a conversation that Year 7 Pastoral Care teachers are having with their roll call classes as we work through the eSafety Commissioner’s video series #GameOn.  In roll call the videos are prompting conversations about the amount of time we’re spending on screens outside of school and with consideration of how our screens are impacting the quality of sleep we’re receiving.  We also discuss cyberbullying, engaging with strangers and risks around giving out personal information including password sharing.  These are key concerns for our Year 7 students as over 30% of the cohort identified that they spend, outside of school, four hours or more on a screen each day, and 40% of the grade have identified that they have lost sleep as a consequence of being on a screen.

Through the sessions we borrowed the phrase from one of the videos that online safety is about ‘being smart’; and that while our actions online might not ‘be wrong’, they also may not ‘be clever’.  This is certainly something that attracted conversation in our sessions as it seemed that what was ‘smart’ or acceptable in an online context varied from student to student.  As our young people continue to grow up and mature, there is likely going to be a need for continued education in this space and parents play a key role in this wider conversation. 

If you’re hoping to talk to your young person, but not sure where to start, the eSafety Commissioner has a hub where you can access resources, join webinars, and find tips on how to start hard-to-have conversations.

Tim Masters
On behalf of Year 7 Pastoral Care Teachers