Come morning or night what’s the first and last thing you do? I can bet 9/10 said check your phone. Whether it’s to switch the alarm off, check your calendar or have a quick snoop through Facebook.  We don’t think much of it, gradually over time we have used our phones for more and more tasks each day meaning this addictive behaviour has gone unnoticed.

This being the case we have set an example that our younger generation must live with and learn from.  We already know that prolonged use of phones and other devices are linked to anxiety and depression so why has nothing been done to protect young people from this health hazard.

Many of the big brand social media networks have been allowed to treat child safeguarding as an option!! How has this been allowed when the majority of users within these online sites are children or youngsters? When I spoke to some of our young people it was stated that many of them felt pressured to be online 24 hours a day or to answer a text within the first 5 minutes. There is a need for young people to constantly be available and to feel like they’re not missing out on anything.

In some of my research I found various statements about 24 hour social media, here is what I found.

Dr Cleland Woods said: “Adolescence can be a period of increased vulnerability for the onset of depression and anxiety, and poor sleep quality may contribute to this. It is important that we understand how social media use relates to these. Evidence is increasingly supporting a link between social-media use and well being, particularly during adolescence, but the causes of this are unclear.” 

We should be monitoring what our children are doing on social media and how much time their spending on it, we need to limit the use of not just social media but also, game consoles and computers.

It doesn’t take much to trigger issues like this in young people so why add fire to the flame, let them grow up like kids, have fun, get muddy and experience life instead of handing them a console and letting live the rest of their
life’s through a screen.

“Live life to the fullest it only happens once”​

Sam Connelly