Safeguarding Children and Young People Online

A Guide for Practitioners

Megele, Claudia

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781447331841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on the latest research, theory and practice, this is the first book to provide social workers with an evidence-based, practical guide to safeguarding children and young people from abuse, in a world of sexting, selfies and snap chat. It presents an overview of the key e-safety and online risks to children and young people, including dark play, digital self-harm, and online grooming, sexualisation, bullying, offending and radicalisation. It also examines online boundaries, relationships and identity and the future of technologies. Case study examples and discussion of key principles will help social workers consider, mitigate and manage online risks and their effects for safeguarding children and young people, and their families and carers.

1

Digital lives and cyborg childhood

Tallulah Mary Scarlett Wilson was 15 years old when she jumped in front of a train and killed herself. The Regulation 28: Prevention of Future Deaths report (Chief Coroner of England & Wales, 2014), sent to the Secretary of State at the time, indicates:

The jury found that, as a result of Tallulah’s dissatisfaction with her friendship group, she created an online persona.

She posted about self harm and suicide. She included photographs that she said were of herself following cutting.

Her consultant psychiatrist gave evidence that, with hindsight, it seems that when her Tumblr account was deleted (following her mother’s discovery of the damaging nature of her posts), Tallulah may have felt herself to be in some way deleted. Thousands of people had read her posts and she had gained great satisfaction from that. So on the one hand, her internet use may have had a negative impact; and yet on the other hand, preventing her internet use may have had a negative impact.

The jury included the following in the narrative determination.

This case has highlighted the importance of online life for young people. We all have a responsibility to gain a better understanding of this, which needs to be achieved through appropriate dialogue. This is a particular challenge for health professionals and educators.

Coroner’s concerns

During the course of the inquest, the evidence revealed matters giving rise to concern. In my opinion, there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken. In the circumstances, it is my statutory duty to report to you.

The Matters of Concern are as follows.

Although Tallulah was treated by a number of healthcare professionals, and her mother was extremely concerned about her wellbeing, no person who gave evidence felt that, at the time they were looking after Tallulah, they had a good enough understanding of the evolving way that the internet is used by young people, most particularly in terms of the online life that is quite separate from, but sometimes seems to be used to try to validate, the rest of life. (pp 1–2)

Unfortunately, the tragic story of Tallulah is not an isolated case and demonstrates that lack of due attention and understanding of the practice implications of technology may result in inadequate safeguarding, leading to tragic outcomes.

In contrast, the story of Bethany Mota who, after experiencing significant cyberbullying, was able to develop her social presence and identity through her YouTube channel demonstrates that with appropriate support, guidance and opportunity, young people can find validation and positive reward through their online engagement which can enable them to overcome even significant challenges such as cyberbullying (NBC News, 28 April 2015). Experiences such as those of Tallulah and Bethany demonstrate that positive and healthy online engagement is a question of quality of engagement within a psycho-socio-ecological context and that such engagements are often closely linked with children and young people’s sense of self and identity, and offer potential for both positive growth and harm.

The spread, frequency, intensity and tragic consequences of cyberbullying, cyber-aggression and other forms of cyber-abuse and cyber-offending are an increasing and evolving safeguarding challenge. And as highlighted by the above examples, a lack of understanding of the various risks and their ramifications can have significant implications. However, given the vast and diverse range of technologies and their rapid evolution, many parents and practitioners feel they do not have the necessary knowledge and experience to be able to guide and advise the children and young people.

Therefore, it is important that parenting classes include digital literacy and digital citizenship education and that parents’ digital literacy and knowledge and skills in relation to digital citizenship are considered and assessed as an integral part of parental capacity. Furthermore, practitioners should have clear guidance and training about e-professionalism/digital professionalism and online safeguarding and, as discussed later in Chapter 3, assessments and safeguarding should be holistic and should integrate both online and offline safeguarding. While this has been acknowledged in the Knowledge and Skills Statement for newly qualified social workers, we suggest that new digital knowledge, skills and capabilities, digital citizenship, e-professionalism/digital professionalism and online safeguarding also be included in the Professional Capabilities Framework as well as Knowledge and Skills Statement for social workers at all levels of experience.

Digital access and engagement, digital risks and resilience, digital literacy and digital citizenship have become the new sources of inequality in society affecting children and influencing their potential development and future opportunities. Therefore, it is essential that assessments include careful consideration of the child’s digital access and engagement, knowledge of digital risks, digital resilience, digital identity and digital citizenship as an integral part of the holistic safeguarding of children and young people. Questions around public and private, audience, privacy, confidentiality, self-disclosure, digital permanence and deleting information, digital footprint and others should be conversation starters in practice, to assess and enhance children’s digital access, digital resilience, digital literacy, digital identity and digital citizenship.

Although this book is the first dedicated to e-safeguarding in social work, it is part of a trilogy of books on online safeguarding that encompasses e-safeguarding children and young people, adults, and those experiencing mental health difficulties. The primary objective of this book is to offer a holistic and effective model and methodology for the assessment of online risks, their ramifications and their integration into the assessment triangle for evidence-based and holistic safeguarding of children and young people.

Children and young people’s biopsychosocial developments are accompanied by increasing self-awareness, and in adolescence this includes a desire for autonomy and social belonging. Hence, as part of their developmental journey, through shared symbolisms, norms and behaviours, young people define themselves in relation to their peers and environment and as distinct from their parents. So in adolescence young people may attribute particularly high value to appearance (looks, style, grooming, etc), social symbols (clothing, mobile phone and technological gadgets, etc) and popularity (belonging and social acceptance). These factors, combined with peer pressure and the need for social acceptance, amplified by the effect of digital and social media technologies, create a constant competition for attention, and an increasingly challenging developmental landscape for young people where the ‘wrong’ appearance, missing social symbols or lack of adherence to group norms may result in harsh labelling, social exclusion or bullying.

Notwithstanding these challenges, social media offers unlimited positive and transformative potential for children and young people, and can help mitigate the risks of adverse outcomes.

Examples of helpful technology

Daniel is 16 and is able to contact his social worker via WhatsApp. This means that he can reach her even when he has no credit on his phone.

Johnson is 20 years old. He experiences psychosis and post-traumatic stress, and hears voices. However, his experience has improved as his use of avatar therapy has helped him develop a greater sense of control over the voices he hears.

Adolescents’ risk-taking behaviour offers the potential for their learning, discovery and growth, but can also become a source of vulnerability as it exposes them to increased risks online. Furthermore, the transitional and identity challenges of adolescents may result in strengths (for example, capacity for change) and vulnerabilities (for example, more impulsive or emotional decision-making), which may be exacerbated by psychosocial challenges. For example, Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) demonstrate that the presence of psychosocial challenges can significantly increase the likelihood of bullying and harassing others – about one in three (32 per cent) of online perpetrators compared to one in ten (10 per cent) of non-perpetrators reported frequent substance abuse, and this increased the likelihood of online aggression against others by four times. Furthermore, research suggests that many young people seem to lack the ability to determine when to withhold personal information, even when they have received such training (boyd, 2008), and when to stop communication with strangers once identities have been revealed (Mesch and Talmud, 2010).

The challenges of e-safeguarding vary widely, and many digital and social media risks and potential negative outcomes have been normalised in society, their effects etched and relegated to the ‘collective unconsciousness’ that further complicates safeguarding practice. For example, there seems to be widespread diffusion of responsibility and complacency regarding terms and conditions and privacy. Although many social networking sites (SNS) regularly upgrade, update and change their software applications, and although many times this affects their users’ privacy settings, most people neither recheck their privacy settings nor read the terms and conditions and the privacy policies for the different websites, SNS or social media platforms they use, not even when advised about changes in these policies – hence our reference to ‘collective unconsciousness’ as opposed to ‘collective consciousness’. In a sense, we have grown used to ‘the situation’, and tend to assume that since so many others are using the same SNS it should be okay – this is an example of how risks are normalised in society and people’s everyday experiences.

An example of compulsive technology

Sarah is 14 and lives in London. She was cycling frantically to get to her local library, and when she got there, she logged on to a computer and emailed her online friend, Jackie, in New York, ‘begging’ her for a ‘BIG favour’. Sarah’s parents had confiscated her phone for two weeks, and so she was emailing her username and password for Snapchat to Jackie, and needed Jackie to log in to her Snapchat account every day for the next two weeks to post random pictures and messages back and forth between Sarah and her friends. The subject or content of the message didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it would keep the live stream of messages between Sarah and her friends, known as Snapstreak, alive; Snapstreaks ‘die’ if friends don’t snap back and forth for 24 hours. Jackie is a Snapchat user herself – running a dozen Snapstreaks, she checks her phone about every 10 to 15 minutes. To keep the Snapstreaks going and when she at school and in a class, she just snaps a photo of the ceiling or the wall. Thanks to Jackie’s help, Sarah’s Snapstreak has been running for the past 210 days. Both Sarah and Jackie feel guilty if they don’t respond immediately to their friends’ snaps as they “don’t want to leave them hanging”.

This sort of excessive, and obsessive, behaviour binds many young people today, and is part of the reason why Snapchat is the ‘darling’ of social media at the moment. Indeed, this type of behaviour is the reason behind the business success of Snapchat, where it is valued at about US$20 billion, while Twitter, with a similar number of users, is valued at about US$3 billion.

Snapchat uses gamification techniques to generate user engagement. For example, long Snapstreaks are rewarded with coloured hearts and other emojis on users’ profiles, and a number next to the emoji shows the number of days they have been Snapstreaking continuously. Indeed, the entire design of Snapchat and its functionalities are based on a combination of psychology, augmented reality and gamification techniques. Even the relationship between users is gamified by assigning various badges that classify the relationship. Most Snapchat posts disappear in 1 to 10 seconds, although Snap stories last for 24 hours, and Snapstreaks stay alive as long as they are regularly updated. It is not difficult to understand the reason for Snapchat’s popularity among young people. For young people developing their social identity and seeking social belonging, Snapchat offers a combination of digital belonging, the fun of augmented reality, gamified social status and recognition, and digital catharsis. Snapchat users have long bought a myth about the ephemerality of messages and hence, the ‘lack of consequentiality’.

However, the question is, what does the young person gain by compulsively snapping photos every few minutes to keep a Snapstreak alive? What is the significance of a Snapstreak badge beside a username, aside from indicating a compulsive snapping habit? It is, indeed, difficult to see the value of vacuous online postings as they neither represent valuable content nor a moment of interest or significance, and nor do they represent a relational bond between the snapping friends beyond the bond of Snapstreaking together. Indeed, in a market-oriented attentional economy, it is the eyeballs a...