Louisa

Hello. This is the online resilience podcast with me Louisa Street and Professor Andy Phippen. We're discussing all aspects of young people's online lives and giving practical advice on how to support the young people you work with. Music is by Roo Pescod.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Online Resilience Podcast. Today we're talking about how to educate young people about digital resilience. As part of the work that we've done on the Head Start project, we've worked closely with Evolve, who have created a lot of lesson plans specifically on how to teach about digital resilience.

And I'm going to go straight to Andy to ask for a bit of an overview of what those lesson plans do and how teaching staff could use them.

Andy

Okay, so Project Evolve basically is run by South West Grid for Learning who people might have heard of. They’re obviously a leading online safety charity. It's basically a massive resource of all sorts of lesson plans and similar and supported materials across a massively wide range of online issues.

It's mapped onto education for a connected world, which is the government standard for what you might refer to as digital literacy. But it has somewhat diverged from that. And it's become the case now where if staff or teachers, if you've got any resources around topic X related to digital, the first thing I do is say have you checked out project Evolve because it covers things from copyright and copyright infringement to online relationships to legal issues and more more sensitive stuff. Yeah. And. It’s free to use it, so it's got a ton of stuff on it. I spend quite a lot of time looking at the data behind it, so seeing what schools are using and those sorts of things. And I think that's particularly interesting because if we talk about the messages we've had from young people through the whole Head Start process, it's very much about, you know, don't just deliver a lesson on sexting and don't just deliver a lesson… Look at it in a broader perspective and start young. If you look at the usage of project Evolve resources, the vast majority of them, first of all, are around primary age, predominantly key stage two, and very much around online relationships and image and self identity.

Those are the two big areas, which is, I think, really encouraging. Because while we spend time, if we are to believe the media in blind panic about this is terrible and that's terrible and we've just got to stop young people using it.

Well, what it would suggest to me is that the education that's being delivered, making use of the project Evolve resources is very much more holistic. Very much more holistic? It is more holistic in that it considers all online issues can relate to image and self-identity.

Online issues can relate to online relationships rather than just going right. Can you just give us a lesson on cyberbullying or something like that? They have got some cyberbullying resources in in the platform, but those are probably some of the least used things, which is, I think is really encouraging because it shows that, you know, education professionals that are using the resource are seeing the bigger picture, which is great as far as the messages we get from young people from Head Start.

Louisa

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's great about the project Evolve lesson plans is that it's not just a PowerPoint, it's activities and all of the information that you would need in order to have a really good, really interactive session.

And, and yeah, it's all there, it's all available is all free for schools and you have to create an account. But that should, you know, shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. And then you've got access to all of those resources.

Andy

The vast majority of the resources, I should say as well just to reassure you, they have been developed by people with experience as teachers and education professionals. It's not just the case of, you know, a couple of people decided to knock together some lesson plans with no experience, which is probably why it’s used so much.

I mean, they they sort of switched it on September last year as the main thing and they've picked up around … certainly over 10,000 schools using it now which which I think is, is demonstrates its value I think. Yeah, you know we don't normally do a lot of sort of product plugging, but you know, it is literally the case now where, you know, I was doing something the other day, it was informal youth group stuff and someone said, our problem is there's no resources for older teenagers. It's like Project Evolve. And then you get a question from another presentation you're doing it from teaching project. You know, it is, it's, it's, it's a very, very valuable repository. Then we have a side that is what they do as well is they have these things called knowledge maps, which you could say are kind of assessments, but they're not really assessments.

They're just ways to look at the knowledge of the young people in the class in an interactive way that doesn't have that sort of right or wrong answer, but it allows you to sort of baseline and then develop knowledge and things as well.

Which which again is from my perspective as a researcher is invaluable because we're just collecting data all the time on, you know, the sorts of applications of this in the classroom and the sorts of things that young people are being asked about which which again, broadly shows us that the focus around relationships and working with other people and interacting with other people online and similar are where the focus is. And on the whole, the knowledge isn't too bad. Which, you know, I got a meeting with the DCNS in a couple of weeks. I think about it.

I think those are the messages we don't really give out. We're so busy going, Oh, terrible. It's these young people doing dangerous things and they're being harmed and things. The message, you know, most the time young people know what they're doing and most of the time young people have got knowledge of this and they will engage with these sorts of things rather than, you know, it's almost become a convenient excuse hasn’t itl. Young people, I want to talk about this, well they do have the opportunity to and that might reflect on, you know, the, the attitudes of the person making that claim. Or the people saying, well, it's too complicated and platforms need to sort this stuff out because at the end of the day it's good to see that it's being acknowledged. This is about relationships and the technology facilitates that, but it's still about relationships.

Louisa

Yeah, definitely. And I think so, a couple of things I'll just pick up on in that. Firstly, I don't think we've got any qualms about promoting project Evolve because we've actually worked with them to match the some of the project of our lesson plans onto the online resilience tool, which isn't currently available online, but it is available. So if anybody is listening to this in the next couple of months, as we're in April at the moment, so if it's not online yet, you can just email me and I can send you that mapping document. And hopefully sort of once we get to May-June time, it will be online.

So you literally be able to, if you identify a behavior that you're concerned about, particularly if it's something that perhaps a few young people in your school are all exhibiting a certain behavior, then you could do a.. look at the look at a mapping document and do a lesson, particularly around that issue.

And yeah, I mean, I think in terms of talking to young people about their online lives, what we've found doing the focus groups is that young people do want to talk about it. But there is some… I think there's some value in really knowing what you're going to be talking about.

And, you know, I've often said on this podcast, you don't need to know everything, you don't need to know all of the different games. You just need that professional curiosity to ask young people, ‘what are you doing on these games and and what are you enjoying about it?’

And, and those kind of questions. But if you're delivering a lesson around social media to a specific age group, it's probably worth knowing what social media you are likely to be talking about and knowing a little bit about these platforms just so that you can get into those conversations.

And it's not, it doesn't need to all be the young people telling you how it works rather than you kind of being able to deliver that session. And I think, you know, that's that's something that talking to young people, they said they'd had a lot of lessons where the teacher just read through a PowerPoint.

And that suggests to me that perhaps the teacher didn't feel very confident with the subject and didn't perhaps know enough to go off script a little bit. So being prepared, doing a little bit of research beforehand, using the resources.

If you're using a project Evolve lesson plan, you know, kind of digging into that a little bit and making sure you're familiar with the subject before we start so that it doesn't kind of become the lecture style lesson.

Andt

No think that's something that comes from young people. For all the years I've been doing this, it's kind of like we don't need to see another video, we don't need another PowerPoint. We want to be able to discuss things.

And, you know, I do have some sympathies with teachers if you're looking at more sensitive areas. So I've got a friend who's a teacher. We were chatting Facebook because that's what old people do. And he sort of mentioned some of the work that I'm doing.

And he came out with the usual convoluted babble about, well, you know, it is it's really difficult to look at this stuff because you need to be up on the technology and you need to know what they're talking about. You need to know what the technologies do. And just as I said to him sounds like a bunch of excuses to me. No, no. And then he said more the same, you know, you've spoken to me about this before. You don't need to do that. You need to be able to be in a position where you can bring critical thinking to it and you need to answer the questions about sex and drugs, slightly sarcastically and he says ‘Yeah, but if I do that, I'm going to get sacked’ which was a really interesting reflection on the fact that this is this is kind of why looking at these sorts of things in a broader perspective is always more valuable because yeah, if you do do the sexting that's in all the porn lesson, they're all going to be some some challenges there, certainly from parents.

I've certainly had challenges from parents before where I got into a school and stuff about those sort of things. Obviously, from my position, it's it's easier because the school can just say to the parents, oh, don't worry, we won't have him again.

And from my perspective, it's just kind of like, well, I could have predicted that. And those are the families that you need to be more concerned about, because there's absolutely no way that the young person would disclose to their parents in most cases.

But if you're doing it in a more open way, and a discursive way, then these sorts of things might come up and you can end up with student-led discussion around these sorts of things. So you're not marching in. Go right, sit down. Settle down. We're going to talk about sexting today. Yeah. Which I can, I can completely appreciate. It does present some professional challenges, particularly if you don't have the support of your senior management. I mean, I would say to teachers, if you don't have the support of senior management, you might like to remind them of the the educational duties under keeping children safe in education about how that should be covering these sorts of topics, those those sorts of statutory documents generally do focus the minds of senior managers.

Louisa

And I mean, I think that that's really interesting because I think a lot of people might feel anxious opening up discussion on some of these topics. And and so it might be tempting to kind of rely a bit more heavily on a on a PowerPoint and a bit of a lecture.

And if you're if you're going to give a lecture about something, you are going to need to know all of the details of it. But if you have a conversation, actually, perhaps you will need to know less going into it.

And in one of the focus groups that we did, we were talking to a group of young people about lessons, about pornography and sexting, and they were saying like, yeah, you're going to be giggly for the first 10 minutes that like, teachers just need to accept that.

But it doesn't mean we don't want to talk about it and it doesn't mean we won't be able to talk about it seriously. But just let people have that five or 10 minutes at the  beginning to get that silliness out.

And I think that I was really amazed at the maturity that your person showed and kind of recognizing that.

Andy

That's certainly been my experiences in the past. You know, it's like I would always start off a discussion on something like pornography, by not saying, let's talk about porn, but saying, you know, what sort of things might you think adults are worried about, you say and they basically they'd come up and talk about porn.

But you know even even with a group of 14 year old lads talking about that sort of thing, once the 10 minutes of giggling of you heard about this one have you heard about that one? And this one’s really gross. They will start asking sensible questions and things that you've got. You've got to acknowledge the novelty of the fact this thing is quite unusual to them. But I think I think the other thing as well is to always be I'm going to say this, I'm an academic, always be evidence led about these things as well.

I was a little bit difficult, this charity the other day, and they've got a big poster about their service and they got a big list of harmful content. And one of the things, because they've got stuff like terrorist material and then they've got pornography.

So I posed the question, is pornography harmful? And they said, yes, it is. Where’s  the evidence that pornography’s harmful? Because if you sort of reflect on the fact that if it is truly harmful, we should have seen a massive rise in sexual crime in the last 20 years.

No, we haven't. Now, there's lots of challenges to that statement, but we just haven't. Does that mean we should let kids look at porn the whole time? No, obviously not, because it does affect people in different ways. But blanket statements of you shouldn't do this because it's damaging.

Well, is it damaging, you know, so, you know, it's one of those things where just because you're not saying, you know, it goes back to the don't masturbate because it gives you hairy palms, well, sort of thing. Just because it's a sensitive issue, it's something that maybe most of us are uncomfortable talking about.

It doesn't mean you should just shut it down by making up nonsense. You know, I have met young people who clearly have a problematic relationship with pornography. Does that mean that every young person who watches pornography will be damaged in some way?

Well know it doesn't. You know, if that was the case, we would have millions of young adults walking around now who are very much damaged by it. Now, does it cause issues in relationships? Yes, absolutely. Does it cause challenges in terms of unrealistic expectations, body image?

And yes, to some people it does, but saying it's harmful. You know, that's just a problematic blanket statement. And I think it's always good to to look at the evidence of these things.

Louisa

Yeah, absolutely. And I think considering how common using pornography is amongst adults, even if we could stop all under 18s watching any pornography ever, we'd still need to be talking to them about it because you still need to be able to think about it critically as an adult and recognize that, you know, it's not real.

And so, yeah, like just sort of being concerned that it's harmful is, is fine. But using that as a reason not to talk openly to young people about what the potential issues might be. And, and, you know, similarly, why people do it, what are the benefits of it?

You know, what, if we're going to talk about the problems, then, you know, there's a perhaps it's useful to also consider the drivers for that behavior.

Andy

I know we're going to look at pornography. We're going to look at pornography in more detail in a future podcast. But, you know, you can have some. The reason it exists is because people consume it as a pure capitalist model, basically. And you know, regardless of how much people wring their hands and go, this is terrible, this is disgusting. Well, millions and millions of people watch it every day. So let's get over that bit and talk about it in a more progressive manner.

Louisa

And I think that also allows us to actually talk to young people about illegal pornography as well. You know, if we're just saying it's all bad all the time, then we're not able to differentiate. Actually, this is illegal because, you know, this this person's underage or because this is bestiality and those kind of things, which actually that's important for young people to understand, because if they've just been told it's all bad, then they may not recognize when actually it's worse.

Andy

And, you know, dealing with the questions like, well, have you ever watched any, you know, my my usual response to that is my I've seen so much of it for work.

Louisa

And you know, I think with any questions like that, it's just important to have an answer prepared Be prepared to be asked that question. So when I'm not making podcasts, I teach young people about drugs. And I always get asked, Have you ever done drugs?

But I'm always prepared. You know, I know what I'm going to say. And and I what I say is I'm actually not going to answer that question because it's not relevant to what I'm talking to you about today.

And, you know, I think you can be, you can say, I'm not going to answer that to young people as long as you tell them why you're not going to answer.

Andy

That, you know, that's a really good point in the a lot of the discussions I have, particularly around sensitive issues with young people, I always start by saying, I'm not going to ask you what you do. Yeah, well, I think it's a reasonable contract to make for young people, people's go.

That's the case then I don’t want you asking me what I do, you know, what we will do is talk about scenarios or stuff that's happened with the media or it is specifically say you are going to talk about Piers, please don't need them.

Louisa

Yeah

Andy

You have ‘Have they done that. I didn't know that’. And all of a sudden it becomes a massive issue in the schools. And so, no, I think that's a, you know, a very valid thing to to say. And it then creates an opportunity to discuss things in terms of why we don't ask people directly.

Louisa

Yeah, absolutely. And if you if you have a sort of class rules or agreement or anything in place, there will probably be something in that about the fact that it's not confidential. And so, yeah, we can't if we can't guarantee that what is said in this room is going to stay in this room, then no one's going to be asked to share personal experiences.

Andy

It's a bit like when I see the surveys from charities saying, Oh, we asked 2000 children. Have they ever said to me, it's like, Well, they’re not going to say Yes. You basically well talk about shutting down the data collection process immediately.

But I think this goes back to what we were saying earlier about having a discussion is more rewarding. But it's not just a case of rocking up and going to talk among yourselves. You know, one of the things I've heard from from some schools and actually one school I've worked with where it was actually one of the reasons they didn't get an outstanding was because the young people had said the staff there weren't capable of facilitating a sensible debate. And that's kind of what you're doing you’re encouraging young people to voice their views as long as they're not horrendous. And making it clear that if people do both sides use the you know they get. You can get into an interesting discussion about freedom of speech. Yeah, because you will get some edge lord. This idea that they can say whatever the hell they want because of the speech.

Louisa

And they think being prepared for, you know, you potentially are going to open a bit of a can of worms. So maybe giving yourself 10 minutes at the end of the lesson to wrap some of our up. And, you know, not not kind of feel like lots of stuff has been raised and and then you've just kind of left those things unresolved. So if you are having a more open discussion and perhaps you're not using a sort of strict lesson plan to do that, making sure you save a little bit of time at the end just to kind of yeah, I guess kind of close that up and make sure that people aren't leaving feeling very elevated, I suppose.

Andy

I think that's equally applicable to, if you like, the the less formal education settings as well. Where we know a lot of pastoral education does go on, but it's all right to say, oh, what's that? And you explain to me what that piece of technology is.

But to have some appreciation, I think one of the things I come back to a great deal is that ‘I use Facebook on great WhatsApp, therefore I can run a class about this’. You know, that's not the case at all.

But, you know, think about your own biases. Think about where the evidence of your bias is coming from. We go back to the classic situation of violent video games, and violent children, and trying to explain that to a fairly senior safeguarding member of staff of the school and trying to take apart their view. And then they just look at you and go ‘well that’ what I reckon’.

Louisa

Yeah

Andy

That's really not the starting point for discussion. Well, I don't think you should do it. Well, why not? Because it doesn't fit in with my belief system is not helpful.

Louisa

Yeah, and I think, you know, that that was one of the other, I guess bits of advice I would maybe give if someone's thinking about doing a session and is feeling a bit nervous is any claims that you're intending to make, try to check them before and say things like, do video games actually make people violent?

Well, the evidence says no. But sure, if people are playing video games, they might have violent outbursts whilst they're playing. But what we're saying when we're saying no, they don't cause violence is you can play Call of Duty and be running around shooting people all day. That does not equate to someone then picking up a gun and, you know, going out in public with it with the intention of hurting people. Those two things don't don't have any kind of evidence link.

Andy

No, it's it's it's more to do with the competitive nature of the game and the frustration of of losing. You know, I always go back to the fact that you hear about far more fights over FIFA than you do about Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto because it's far more competitive.

But you also hear about fights over people supporting a specific team. And so, you know, saying, oh, if you carry a gun in a video game, therefore you will become violent. These you know, they've been trying to prove that for 40 years.

It's always yeah, it's always been it just, you know, oh, well, it feels right. I think that's far too much of that in this this area. And it seems to be getting considerably worse if you look at the discussions of the online safety bill at the moment, second reading in the House of Commons, I can’t say I was particularly impressed with what was discussed, but they get a lot of that sort of thing. They're talking about controlling legal, harmful content.

Now, if I look at the massive survey we have on young people disclosing what they've seen online, that's upsetting the majority of it. Not just one of the biggest disclosures is around current affairs. So if we're talking about legal but harmful, then are you really proposing in this legislation that social media platforms have to stop kids looking at the news? Because if you look at recent data collected on that survey, a lot of them are talking about Ukrainian war being the upsetting thing they've seen online. Are we proposing that we should stop them doing that?

Well, hopefully not. And hopefully it's something that needs talking about with the young people. But, um. But yeah, yeah, you know, just see too many political discussion going well This is fact, and it really isn't. You know, I saw a piece a while ago, I think I mentioned the podcast before, someone claiming that pornography is the number one concern of young people, online harms. You know, you said what are your big concerns about online life and made very rarely mentioned porn.

Louisa

Well yeah and if porn comes up which I you know, occasionally it does depending on how long you spend talking but. If it's raised by the young people, often their concerns are not about themselves. They're concerned for other young people because they've picked up this idea that we should be concerned about this because it's harming somebody.

Andy

So it's classic third person effects. It's like, Well, I'm fine, but other people aren't. Yeah, you can say I'm fine, but it's a worry that that younger kids are looking at it You talk to a year 11 and ask you know when did you start looking at porn year 8 Okay. But you worried about the year 8s watching is now? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's it's something that we clearly. I just read it, I. The number one concern is clear. I might have you on the podcast before because I've had covid and I can’t remember things anymore.

One of the other things was also citing a piece of work that said a certain percentage of pornography videos contains some form of sexual violence. And I actually tracked it down to the original source because it ground my gears so much and it's based on a sample of 400.

What was referred to in the article is 400 popular pornography videos. Okay. I right now I think I'll stop ahead. Given that Pornhub has 4.5 million videos on their platform, 400 doesn't seem like a truly representative sample. And as I have written about, popular videos would imply popular based upon the browsing habits of the person doing the sample.

Louisa

Yeah. Yeah, that's troubling.

Andy

You know, you will have people going, I don't like pornography, so I don't think people should watch it. But that doesn't mean that you should end any conversation. Clearly, there's some problematic issues with it, but harmful.

Louisa

And, you know, I think there's… When you speak to young people, there are some young people who will be very confident in sharing their views and their opinions. And then there will be some young people who will try to say what they think you want to hear, because that is what you have trained them to do.

So if, you know, if we go into a school and say to people, pornography is really bad isn’t it? Then they're going to be like, Yeah, pornography too. And they're going to think of all of the potential issues that they might have kind of recognize.

But yeah, I think we should just remember that the schooling system does encourage them to do that and to kind of give the answers they're being guided towards.

Andy

I think the word you use there in terms of that they were trained, did a very good job from from an early age. Being given assemblies and talks from the local copper is all about how these things are bad and your life is over if you do them, then it is Pavlovian instruction. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I definitely said this before, all of the things that really grinds my gears is the the use of the term cyberbullying because you will literally have cyberbullying is bad.

Okay, so what is it? It's being mean online. Is it? Because, you know, I've been told cyberbullying is now. So if we stop cyberbullying, you know, again, it's it's a wonderfully broad political statement that stop cyberbullying. I think the new European Online Services Bill, which is kind of like reflecting some of the online safety bill stuff, they're saying that platforms need to sort out misinformation. Now, we haven't even got a reasonable definition of what it is. So, you know, let's stop talking about stopping things not doing. We're going to have sensible conversation about these things and stuff.

Louisa

Yeah, absolutely. And one other, I guess, faulty claim that I thought might be useful to kind of reflect on before we wrap up is things that you might have been told as a child or as a young person, which you might then pass on to the children and young people in your life without necessarily backing that up first and one that came up in one of the focus groups with quite a young group was staring at a screen all day will make your eyesight bad and you'll have to wear glasses. Now, I can remember being told this as a child that if I sat that close to the TV, it was going to mean that I'd get square eyes and yeah. And my eyesight would be damaged permanently. And these sort of claims, because we're taught them so young, we kind of don't necessarily ever question them. And the reality is looking at a screen doesn't damage your eyesight long term.

It can cause dry eyes, it can cause headaches. And if you think about the rigmarole that you have to go through in an office to set up your computer so it is at the right height. And the all of the health and safety things that we're taught now about making sure you have a break from your screen and moving around and focusing on something in the distance to kind of help your eyes adjust, blinking regularly. Those are all things that probably when a six year old is given a tablet and they're sat with it on their lap, they're not probably thinking about that health and safety set up. But that might be something to kind of consider talking to a young person about rather than simply kind of relying on that.

Andy

You wanna wear glasses. So for setting up a computer in an office every 20th century.

Louisa

Yeah. Gosh. Yeah.

Andy

So you still have an office?

Louisa

Yeah. Not very 2022, was it?

Andy

Well, it is according to some politicians. Yeah, but no, it is. It's. It's those things. Yeah. You know, your eyes are going to grow square just, just unpack them. And, you know, even if the older students talk about why people come up with these things, talk about where bias arise from and things like that, cause a lot of it is down to pure laziness. Oh, they want to have a conversation around. I was going to tell them not to do it, you know.

Louisa

Yeah

Andy

I think I think we talked before about, you know, the and obviously with your experiences, the the drugs parallels and things and how many years we've had. Don't take drugs, kids it bad. It's illegal. Well, it’s worked hasn’t it?

Louisa

You know, I think that particularly with those things that we're taught from when we they can be quite ingrained and we can kind of rely on them a bit when we're asked questions that perhaps we don't know about.

Andy

Oh. Absolutely. You know, it was Grange Hill in my day and Just say, no, no, Zammo or the actor who played them. I still those public appearances by the because he's so well known the the drug addict from Grange Hill. Did that stop people of my generation taking drugs? No. Those things.

Louisa

No. Yeah. So, yeah, I think just kind of being prepared for that. And you know, with a lot of what we talk about with digital resilience is about trying to come back to the young person's welfare. We want to think about like what is the what is their resilience like?

How can we build their resilience and how can we make sure that they are safe and that they have someone that they can talk to if they have problems? And I think the the really important thing about good lessons, about digital resilience, digital literacy is that if a young person feels like, oh yeah, that teacher actually really knew what they were talking about, or they really let me share my opinions, then they're more likely to come and talk to you if they're having issues and if they've got more serious concerns.

Andy

Well, I always go back to the same example. I did something in the Midlands years ago and it was like various schools were being bussed in to do various sessions and one of them was around online stuff and it was lunch time. And I noticed that all of the young people coming from one school congregated for this one teacher and they all wanted to sit with her and they all had had lunch with her afterwards and went, Oh, she's great. Why’s she great? Because she has all questions, right? You know, it was brilliant. It's like, well, that's fairly straightforward, isn't it?

You know, you know, it wasn't a case of she would she will answer all questions, you know, that was go. I must be getting on 15 years ago. And I still think it is relevant today definitely.

Louisa

Yeah. Think that's a really nice point to end on. So we’ll end it there and we've got more podcasts on the way since I keep an eye out in your podcast feed.

That's it for another episode of the online Resilience Podcast. If you liked it, please tell someone who you know who might also enjoy it. You can share on Facebook, Twitter, or even just pop a link in an email.