Linked to the recent work and discourse around Adolescence and Leadership, I’ve launched an online CPD presentation programme on our learning platform Thinkific. It’s a CPD session dedicated to helping teachers and parents understand the way technology is used to continue online narratives around controlling, sexualised and abusive behaviours. Highlighting research from the Youth Endowment Fund, Movember and Women’s Aid the CPD can be used as many times as you wish in a year for a one-off cost of £79.95, has links and PDF notes you can share and is good for large group or individual watching. You can find the course here with a free preview video intro from me.
I was recently in a school in NW London and speaking to some Year 7s when one of the girls said that tracking and locating someone was ‘normal’. I asked what she meant, and she told me that it’s ‘normal’ that you know where everyone is in your social circles and that you SHOULD always know where your partner is when you have one. I asked why and she just said that you need to know because ‘they might be cheating and you need to know where they are when they’re not with you’. This is a really concerning feature of young friendships and relationships in my opinion…starting a relationship without trust and then becoming an amateur sleuth all the time must be exhausting and stressful AND sets up patterns of controlling and monitoring behaviours which are really unhealthy and can easily slip into abusive patterns.
Various research tells us that these tracking is becoming normalised within young relationships and sadly, it will set young people up to a life of paranoia and unnecessary pressure. Not only that, but issues of violence and harm have been seen lately through a consequence of this tracking using Snap Maps on SnapChat where a girl in Peebles in Scotland was tracked to a restaurant by three other girls who had been bullying her and two of them had beaten her up without the third filmed the attack.
There is also various evidence e that SnapMaps are used by county lines gangs and features in online grooming – sadly if it;’s become ‘normal’ to track one another on social media apps then young people are very unlikely to be able to see the potential dangers they face from it.
This CPD session is designed for teachers and parents to understand and manage the use of location services and how other online tools are being used maliciously by various actors in young peoples’ lives.
Below is some feedback I received following the online RWBA CPD #EYP2CtW25 delivery of this session at the start of May:
“A difficult and uncomfortable session, important topic handled skilfully with both sensitivity but also realism”;
“…agree with Bernie, we need to bring parents into conversations about e-safety, relationships and all aspects of PSHE/RSE but it’s often challenging”;
“…I have heard Bernie speak before & he’s worked in our school, he is great at opening up spaces for difficult conversations, with both boys & girls. I would recommend him…”
