It’s hard to keep up with the changing landscape of social media usage by children. In 2018, the Australian Psychological Society found that teenagers spent an average of 3.3 hours a day on social media. This is compared to the national average of 1.5 hours. The majority of this time spent on social media is through a mobile phone device which can be used anywhere. Digital usage and social media is making it harder to distinguish between “on school grounds” and “off school grounds”, raising the question – how far does your school’s duty of care extend?
Changing digital landscape
Along with the increased use of social media, children and young people are using different networks from adults. Facebook is not commonly used amongst children with Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and WhatsApp being more popular. Furthermore, new apps are emerging such as:
- TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) – live streaming app with more than 1 billion downloads globally which is popular amongst young people, being listed as one of the apps teenagers are most excited about in a survey by Business Insider;
- Yubo (formerly Yellow) – app known as “Tinder for kids” which is aimed at 13 – 17 year olds to allow them to make ‘friends’ in their area; and
- Omegle / Whisper – apps that randomly pairs users with strangers to video chat.
Furthermore, the platforms that we are familiar with, such as Facebook Messenger and Instagram are being used in new ways. For example, Instagram has a messenger function and ‘stories’ to allow people to share images and videos which expire after 24 hours and Messenger can be used to send ‘secret’ or ‘disappearing’ messages.
Child safety issues
Social media and technology themselves are not a bad things. It can be used by children to stay connected with their friends, even when they move interstate or overseas. It can be used to learn, to communicate efficiently (such as when soccer training is cancelled) and to keep children connected with their family. However, they do create child safety risks on a scale we have not seen before.
The Australian Psychological Society study found that 15% of teenagers report to be contacted by strangers daily on social media. Furthermore, 35% of teenagers reported that they posted something that they later regretted and 29% had been bullied on social media.
The impact of social media also crosses into mental health concerns with 63% of teenagers stating that they feel pressured to look good in photos on social media and 56% often feel negative emotions after using social media such as feeling left out or feeling like “everyone else is living the dream”.
Your School’s duty of care
It is becoming virtually impossible for schools to insist that their duty of care ends when the school day ends. Often, child safety concerns on social media are occurring on the school grounds. Even where they occur off school grounds and outside of school hours, the impact may return to the school.
For example, there have been several instances of students placing videos on TikTok while in their school uniform. Videos have included sexualised videos, self-harm and violence. This has often led regulatory authorities to locate and identify the children in the videos by contacting the school.
In 2017, two students at St Peter’s College in Adelaide faced charges after they filmed and shared a video of two other students engaging in sexual intercourse. Parents of the school expressed concern that they were not notified by the school of the incident before it hit the news.
These incidents (and many more) send a strong message to schools that it needs to take some responsibility for its students’ technology and social media use. However, it is common for schools to feel powerless in this space as they feel limited in their ability to monitor, police and respond to incidents that occur on social media. This raises questions such as:
- When is the school liable for their students’ social media / technology use?
- What are the school’s powers to respond to allegations of ‘bad behaviour’ online? Can it confiscate phones, take evidence from phones or request that messages are deleted?
- What should a school do about students who commit offences such as image based violence, non-consensual sexting, online harassment and cyber-bullying?
- What can schools do to respond to or help students respond to defamatory content, fake profiles, stalking and sexting?
- How can schools monitor their students’ social media usage?
- How can schools promote a culture of good digital citizenship and online safety amongst their students?
For more information regarding your school’s duty of care in a digital landscape, please do not hesitate to contact us.