Andy Phippen - Online Resilience and Wellbeing in Young People: Representing the Youth Voice

Palgrave Studies in Cyberpsychology aims to foster and to chart the scope of research driven by a psychological understanding of the effects of the new technology that is shaping our world after the digital revolution. The series takes an inclusive approach and considers all aspects of human behaviours and experiential states in relation to digital technologies, to the Internet, and to virtual environments. As such, Cyberpsychology reaches out to several neighbouring disciplines, from Human-Computer Interaction to Media and Communication Studies. A core question underpinning the series concerns the actual psychological novelty of new technology. To what extent do we need to expand conventional theories and models to account for cyberpsychological phenomena? At which points is the ubiquitous digitisation of our everyday lives shifting the focus of research questions and research needs? Where do we see implications for our psychological functioning that are likely to outlast shortlived fashions in technology use?

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14636

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This work is based upon a five-year project, and we are indebted to the work on Ben Bolton at Cornwall Council and Dr. Sarah Canavan-King at King Psychology in the projects early stages, speaking with young people and professionals and laying the foundations that ultimately led to research findings that underpin the Online Resilience Toolkit and its subsequent professional development opportunities.

They play these violent video games , then theyre violent in school.

No, there isnt much evidence of that.

Well Ive seen it.

There really isntthis is a causation policy makers and the media have been trying to show for over 40 years and there is no evidence of it existing.

Well, thats what I reckon. They shouldnt be allowed to play them.

The above is the paraphrasing of an exchange that took place during a training session in the project about which this book is written. The training was to broadly explore the issues arising from many discussions with young people related to online safety the frequently discussed and, it seems, poorly understood term generally associated with the need to keep children safe online.

The training, which is discussed in more detail in Chapters , aimed both to explore attendees knowledge of the online world and to also give them confidence in supporting young people who might be disclosing problems they are facing related to online harms . During this training, there is a focus upon moving away from the technology, focussing on behaviours and bringing in fundamental safeguarding practices such as disclosure and support. One of the key messages delivered is bringing objectivity to safeguarding judgements. In general, attendees were very much in agreement about this approach. However, as we will discuss in later chapters, while it might seem like a simple concept to deliver in a training setting, it seems far more difficult to bring to practice.