"Young people’s behaviour online is influenced less by rules about online safety than about how they feel. It is influenced by emotional needs, pre-existing vulnerabilities and the support around them.
Implications for professionals
1. These messages from young people can help those working in services for children to be alert to harmful content - even when this is not immediately obvious. Pro-anorexia, self-harm material, or content about suicide is very widely seen by all young people and vulnerable groups in particular.
2. Known offline vulnerability should be included in the assessment of any case with a primarily digital component. The impact of multiple or cumulative vulnerabilities present concurrently, or perhaps in the child’s past, may contribute to the extent to which they at risk they might be online.
3. In safeguarding practice: while one risk may be the cause of the referral, there may be other online issues, possibly even more serious, that have not been disclosed. Relationships found between risk types, show that it is likely that others have been experienced or might yet be encountered.
4. Evidence is now being published on the impact on young people of lockdown life during a pandemic - when the role of the digital world in our lives has immensely increased. Research by Young Minds among 2,111 young people (aged 13-25) with a history of mental health needs describes worsening mental health for 83% of respondents. Many reported heightened anxiety, sleep problems, panic attacks and increased urges to self-harm (among those with a history of doing so). A quarter of these young people no longer had access to mental health support as a result of the pandemic. Worsening mental health among children and young people has also been noted by Barnardos. The Children’s Society had reported a decline in children’s well-being predating COVID-19. Children’s mean happiness with their lives was
at its lowest since 2009/10.15 Given the rise of mental and emotional health issues, professionals should consider the digital lives of those they are supporting and assessments should include this." (Conclusion)