By Mrs Anna Hardy, Deputy Principal

In the lead up to National Day Against Bullying it is important for parents to reflect upon the world of cyber-safety and bullying.  Below is some information that can support parents in knowing what their child is using and how to monitor the use of internet safe behaviour at home.

What to do about group chats?

Group chats can be an excellent way for several people to participate in an online conversation together. They most commonly happen through Whatsapp, Instagram Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Messenger for Kids, and Discord. Participants are getting younger and younger.

They can be both helpful and harmful. Notifications ping all hours of the day, stacks of unread messages build up until they are not worth the effort to catch up on, and important information gets lost in the stream which can cause some issues at school.

Drama, exclusion and cyberbullying.

There have also been many times when young people have engaged in nasty behaviour about another person in a group chat, then deliberately invited them into the chat to see those comments. The deliberate nature of this abuse makes it cyberbullying.

Group chats mostly happen outside of school hours. Nevertheless, schools are asked to manage the behaviours of the young people involved in the chat by parents, but more often than not, these chats are happening at very late hours of the night. Parents need to help their kids build some intellectual muscle too by teaching them the life skill of politely exiting a social situation that they feel uncomfortable in, online and off.

This should serve as another reminder of everyone's role to combat negative online experiences, especially parents. Removing access to the devices late at night helps avoid interrupted sleep caused by the group chat notifications and beeps. If they need it for an alarm clock, trot on down to a store and buy one of those ones with the big red numbers that we had before smartphones. 

Remove the ability to engage in conversations at night when the emotional part of the brain switches on, the rational part of the brain takes a break, and we are therefore left more emotionally vulnerable.

Helping young people take control.

Leaving a group chat without warning can offend the remaining group members and become an awkward situation for this text-obsessed generation.

Teach them the skills to know how to leave a group chat that is not helpful or is harmful in any way, including the actual words to use should they need to leave. Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a significant factor in a tween/teen's life, so you will need to navigate around that as well.

We hear reports of young people trying to "catch up" on the hundreds of messages that they have received overnight first thing in the morning (the record being a Mum reporting there was almost 800 messages her 13yr old daughter was trying to catch up on). Their brains are bombarded first thing in the morning, sometimes after a night of often broken sleep checking messages in the middle of the night. They are often anxious and exhausted from it.

Kids have come up with statements such as "sorry guys, this is getting pretty nasty, I am out of here" as words they can use when they need to remove themselves. There have also been some hilarious responses that can add some humour when they exit a toxic chat that may also help to defuse a situation. "I don’t have to go but I am pretending that I do," "I am going to practice my ninja skills and sneak away now." "Do you want to see my impersonation of a tree whilst I leave" "I have to go the planet needs me" and do not forget the timeless "my battery is low" excuse.

Getting kids to realise that they can be "guilty by association," even if they are not the ones saying the nasty stuff is also a necessary part of growing up and parenting.

We want to give young people the skills and confidence to put boundaries around their friendships. We do not have to be accessible all the time just because we can be. We want our kids to know their friends will not go away if they are not involved for thirty minutes while they have dinner. Teach them to be in charge and confident in their relationships. Their friends will understand that their refusal to engage at every moment has nothing to do with the state of their relationship. They will understand this is the way they manage their time, their devices, and their priorities.

Tips to teach young people (and yourself):

Keep group chats positive, helpful, and supportive. These are not places where we have a whinge about someone else, share images without the consent of others, reveal secrets, or create drama, gossip, or spread rumours.

Learn how to leave. Often kids are in multiple chats at once. If the chat is getting toxic, bullying is happening or images circulated, or anything that may be deemed illegal, make sure they know to take a screenshot and log out, so they do not find themselves in a "guilty by association" situation if something gets reported. They need to speak up to a trusted adult immediately. 

Sometimes they have no other option but to leave a group chat, the notifications have become too much, the conversation has become increasingly irrelevant, and their phone has become cluttered with too many group chats for them to keep across them all. In most cases, the exit button is easy to find. In the case of group chats on Instagram for example, tap the header banner in a group conversation to see its participants and then tap on Leave Conversation to quit it. 

Make sure they know they should not feel compelled to respond straight away or be a part of every single interaction. 

Remember that just because there are only six participants in a private chat does not mean that the chat will remain private. There are plenty of ways these chats can become very public.

Avoid using late at night or let people know when they are signing off for the day.

If getting overloaded with alerts, change the way chat notifications appear. Make those pings silent and invisible quickly on both Android and iOS. On Android, open up Settings, go to Apps & notifications, and choose an app to make changes. On iOS, take even more control over the alerts style: From Settings, pick Notifications, then tap on a particular messaging app to see the available options.

It is also useful to silence individual conversations temporarily. It is easy to make sure alerts from certain people come through while limiting the number of pings from everyone in the chat. Most messaging tools and group chat apps allow conversations to be muted for a period, and the option should be easy to find in the app of choice. If not, a simple google search will give instructions.

Welcome BBQ – 26^th February 2021

Thanks to all the families that joined with us to welcome the new staff and the new families into our community.  We launched our Annual Action Plan for 2021 and of course, welcome any feedback or comments around this.  A copy will be made available on our College website.