‘Social media harms our students’

VIRTUALLY all school principals believe social media is harming their pupils’ mental health, a UK poll found.

Echoing the sentiments of many here in Ireland, principals in Britain are calling for new social media laws to keep children safe. Most headmasters have received reports of pupils being bullied or being exposed to unsuitable material – such as sexual content or hate speech – with some saying this is happening on a daily or weekly basis, according to a small-scale poll by the UK’s Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

There were also concerns about parents’ behaviour on social media. The union, which meets for the start of its annual conference in Birmingham today, said more must be done to protect young people.

The poll, which questioned 460 secondary school heads across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in January, found that 95% believe the mental health and wellbeing of pupils has suffered as a result of social media use in the past 12 months.

Nearly all of those polled said they had received reports of pupils being bullied on social media, with 40% saying incidents were reported on a daily or weekly basis.

More than nine in ten (93%) said new laws and regulations should be introduced in the UK to ensure social media sites keep children safe, while more than threequarters (77%) think that the UK government and social media firms should produce more information for parents.

The British government has announced it will introduce a new code of practice this year, setting out the minimum expectations on social media companies.

One head teacher raised concerns that while their school educates students and sets rules on acceptable use, parents do not do so at home. ‘A very small number of parents also behave badly on social media,’ the head said.

Another principal told the ASCL: ‘Far too frequently parents join in with trolling or abuse incidents or model abusive or harmful social media behaviour to their children themselves; the classic example being parents wading in on social media with threats of violence or confrontation to “protect” their own child.’

A third said: ‘The number of issues the school is having to resolve weekly and sometimes daily as a result of bullying through social media that occurs outside of school has increased rapidly and substantially.

‘Not only does this have a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of individual pupils, but it also is having an impact on learning and progress and is diverting valuable and scarce resources away from the classroom.’