Has the Social Media Delay Helped or Hindered Youth Mental Health?

Georgina Livingstone: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our webinar this afternoon. We're so pleased to have you, joining us. Our webinar today is called, Has the Social Media Delay Helped or Hindered Youth Mental Health? And we really appreciate you giving us your valuable time for an hour today. So, my name is Georgina Livingstone, and I am the National Operations Manager for Be You with headspace.
A quick note to let you know that we are recording our session today, and the recording will be made available on the Be You website. And you will also receive a participation certificate for attending today's event, and that'll be sent to you automatically, via email.
Before we, kick off today, I am really pleased to be able to share with you that I'm joining you from Kaurna Country here in Adelaide, and I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and Be You is an initiative that has a national reach, so we also extend that respect to all elders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia.
Many of you would know that yesterday was National Sorry Day, and that today is the first day of National Reconciliation Week, and the theme for this year for National Reconciliation Week is All In. It's a call for all Australians to commit wholeheartedly to reconciliation every day, not just during National Reconciliation Week. If you haven't already checked it out, I highly recommend going to reconciliation.org.au. There are some excellent resources for schools to use with children and young people to explore this year's theme. So, go and check that out if you haven't already. There are some really great resources and activities.
Before we start any of our events at Be You, we always take a moment to remind you to take care of yourself. Think about how what we're talking about may have an impact for you, and with today's topic, I think it's really important to acknowledge that many of you will be wearing different hats as we proceed through our session today. You might be here because you're an educator, a leader, or a member of the wellbeing team, and you might also be a parent or carer, auntie, uncle, or just have children or young people in your life. So, I think the other thing with this topic is that you are probably a social media user yourself.
So sometimes, it's useful to ask yourself which hat are you wearing? And that might also change and be fluid as we talk today. So, however you show up, in whatever hat you're wearing, or piece of clothing you're wearing. We do want your feedback, and we want your participation, and just a gentle reminder to consider confidentiality and keep things de-identified if you are adding to the Q&A today. We are very happy for questions as we progress throughout our session today, and you can use the Q&A function, which you should find at the bottom of your screen.
Okay, if you're not familiar with Be You, we want to let you know that Be You is free, and it's tailored to support your school's unique needs. We have a national team of consultants that are real people. They have worked in roles in schools that are just like your roles. We are not AI bots, and we can work with you on whole-of-school wellbeing in a way that works really well for you and your school. One thing that I'd really like to highlight about Be You is that it doesn't need to be a huge project or a huge investment. Our consultants are going to work with you to look at the options that work for you and your school around student and educator wellbeing, as well as critical incident prevention and response.
If you haven't already, you can check out the implementation stories on our website. There are some excellent examples of how schools have used Be You. We'll make sure you know how to get in touch with our consultants when we send out follow-up comms.
Speaking of follow-up, we wanted to put this at the top of our webinar today. This is Part A of what we're doing in this space around the social media delay. We are also offering follow-up workshops that are state and territory based, so the idea is that you come to a workshop with your state and territory colleagues, and there are some really practical, interactive conversations that can happen around school-based activities. You can scan the QR code. We'll show this at the end as well.
We do want to hear from you throughout our session today, so we're going to run two polls. We're keen to get your feedback and to bounce off each other. The structure of today is that I'm going to introduce our speakers in a minute, then we're going to have a bit of an overview from them around their reflections, top-level reflections around the social media delay. Then we're going to seek your feedback using polls.
When we first decided to run this webinar about the social media delay, it was way back in December. We had no idea what would actually be happening, or the state of play when we got to know, in May, so we took a gamble, we took a punt. And decided that it might be something that people were interested in. And I suppose I just want to signpost that we know there are many different types of schools that you're joining us from today, and no matter what your context, our goal is to provide some practical ideas for ways that you can support young people, parents and carers, and really focusing in on, and this is what our workshops would focus in on, connection, sense of belonging, and inclusion. So, we hope that there's something here for everybody today.
Without any further ado, I am so pleased to be able to introduce our panel. It's time to get excited, because we are very fortunate to have three incredible panel members join us today.
I'm going to give you their bios so you can be as excited as I am. So, Paul Clark is the Executive Manager of the Education, Prevention, and Communities Branch at the eSafety Commissioner. He is responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of programs designed to help Australians to have safer and more positive experiences online. He leads the branch in working with key sectors and communities to co-design and deliver educational materials and programs, build user capability, and develop resilience through training programs and awareness raising.
Paul joined eSafety in 2017 with experience working on domestic and international initiatives that create social benefit. He's worked across the corporate, not-for-profit, and government sectors, and I found out just in our pre-meeting that Paul used to be an events manager, so that's another string to his bow. He's also committed to education and prevention programs with a focus on the positive impact technology plays in people's lives. So welcome, Paul.

Paul Clark: Thank you.

Georgina Livingstone: Thank you for being here. I think what we might do is I might run through the other introductions for the rest of our panel, and then we'll throw back to you, Paul, with your high-level reflections. So, joining Paul today, we have Dr Kate Hadwen, and Kate's depth and breadth of leadership experience spans primary, secondary, and tertiary education. She's currently the Principal of Pymble Ladies' College, which I was very surprised to learn, and so interested to learn, is the largest all-girls school in the Southern Hemisphere.
Kate is also the former Head of PLC Perth. Kate's a former Senior Research Fellow at the Child Health Promotion Research Centre, and she's received a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research. She's also authored policy and curriculum on technology, wellbeing, and anti-bullying. She holds a master's in both Educational Leadership and Narrative Therapy, and a doctorate focused on transitions for boarding students and families.
And in amongst all of that, Kate also holds multiple advisory and governance roles nationally and internationally. She's a strong advocate for student voice and co-design in decision making. So welcome, Kate, and thank you for being here. We really appreciate it.

Kate Hadwen: So lovely to be here. Thanks for the invite. Hi, everybody.

Georgina Livingstone: So, our final panel member today is Nicola Palfrey, and Nicola is a clinical psychologist and a researcher. Nicola's worked extensively with young people and families to support their mental health and wellbeing, as well as working at a systems level to improve practice and enhance outcomes.
In her current role as Head of Clinical Practice at headspace National, Nicola and her team strive to support the delivery of best practice, young person-centred mental health care, and to advocate for and champion young people's rights to drive conversations and decisions about issues that directly impact them. So, thank you, Nicola. We're so pleased that you can be with us today as well.

Nicola Palfrey: Thanks, George, lovely to be here.

Georgina Livingstone: Alright, so with all of the formalities done, what we might do now is flip into our kind of high-level overview and hear from our panellists. So, I'm going to go to Paul first. Paul, just wondering if you can share with us your kind of overview balcony perspective of where we are, or where we find ourselves now.

Paul Clark: Sure, thanks, George, and hi everyone. It's really great to be able to be part of this conversation today. To kick off, what I thought I'd really want to do is to focus on what we've seen since the law came into effect on December the 10th. There's been a lot of discussion about the why, which has been prosecuted over the months leading up to the enactment of the legislation, but I just wanted to reiterate, this has never been about disadvantaging young people. But rather, putting greater pressure on the platforms themselves to step up and take young people's wellbeing more seriously.
Too many young people are being exposed to harmful content too early, and delaying the platforms' ability to allow young people to establish accounts on their platforms is really about giving young people time to build skills and resilience before they step into those environments. I know there's been a lot reported in the papers recently, but we really feel like there has been real and measurable change since December 10. You would have heard Julie, our Commissioner, talk about how this was never going to be a flick-the-switch kind of moment where suddenly everyone would lose their accounts. But in the initial weeks alone, we saw about 4.7 million accounts were restricted, and that's a significant reset.
More broadly, through some of our work with parent groups and early surveys after launch, we've seen about a 37% reduction in under-16s having social media accounts. So that's meant a drop from around half of young people to just over 30%. In the context of such a big reform that's only been in place for a few months, that's a pretty meaningful shift. But we're really keen on looking at, and perhaps more importantly, the changes we're seeing in the platforms' behaviour.
We've seen much stronger checks when users are trying to change their date of birth on an account they've set up, and in some cases, we know platforms have gone back and restricted accounts that shouldn't have been allowed in the first place. More recently, some platforms have updated their age ratings from 13 to 16 plus in the Australian App Store. So, for parents who have enabled parental controls, this will also help them prevent children under 16 from downloading apps when they're too young to really have those accounts.
The other things we've seen are improvements to reporting pathways, clearer language, better visibility, and more accessible help resources. So, there has been progress, but it's equally important to say that it is not complete. There are still many under-16s who are still on social media. Some are creating new accounts, and some have worked out workarounds, which is no surprise.
But that's the reality of where we are right now, and none of us at eSafety are shying away from that. We want to view that in context. This isn't a reform that we thought we'd be able to measure in weeks or even months. We're really trying to unwind more than 20 years of behaviour where social media has become a default part of adolescence and childhood. This is still the early stages, but we're seeing fewer younger people on platforms and more friction when they try to sign up. We're also seeing clearer expectations for families. A big one for us is the growing pressure on platforms to do better.
From a school environment perspective, even these early shifts can have some impact. We know this legislation was brought in much more to address the harmful features which keep kids hooked. It's not going to tackle things like cyberbullying, which we know occurs on messaging apps and in other environments, but it can mean less exposure to harmful content. It can mean fewer issues spilling into the classroom or onto the playground, and the whole point is really about giving young people a bit more breathing space in those formative years. That breathing room matters more than it might sound, particularly when it comes to mental health.
Because what we've been hearing consistently from young people, parents, and educators is that social media can really amplify pressures at an age when students are still figuring out who they are. It's about constant comparisons, exposure to unrealistic standards, and online conflicts that don't end when the school day is done.
For some students, that shows up as anxiety, you know, disrupted sleep, distraction, or difficulty concentrating in class, but for many others, it's much more subtle, but it's still happening in the background. So, even in these early days, a partial reduction in use, fewer hours, maybe a few fewer accounts, can start to ease off some of that pressure. It doesn't solve everything, that's for sure, but it does lower the volume.
So, I suppose at this point, as we're in the early days of implementation, we're hoping that we're going to start to see healthier peer relationships, better sleep and focus, and stronger emotional and social development before the added intensity of social media kicks in.  But it is also, too, we've always talked about this, the important cultural shift. Parents are telling us now, in some of our parent conversations, that they're feeling much more confident in saying, not yet, because it's not just a rule that's been brought in in that family environment, it's a shared expectation, and it's been backed up by law. And that consistency matters.
It reduces pressure on young people who might otherwise feel like, why am I the only one missing out? But at the same time, it's about holding the platforms to account. So, we've identified some real concerns with several major services, and we're actively investigating them. I think we've put out something like 23 notices at the moment, and we have 5 formal investigations underway. We're testing how the systems are working in practice, and we're moving to that enforcement phase. But enforcement is really challenging and has to be done properly. It needs to be evidence-based, and it's got to be really strong enough to stand up in court, and I'm sure you often have heard when we've ended up in court before.
Because the goal here is not about a short-term headline, it's really about that longer-term change. So, I suppose to wrap up, where does that leave us now? Well, just a few months in, we're already seeing fewer under-16s on social media. More safeguards are starting to take shape, and it's a bit of a beginning of a broader cultural reset.
For educators, I think the key point is the environment young people are navigating is shifting, but they're still in that shifting environment, so every conversation you have about online behaviour, critical thinking, and wellbeing helps reinforce that change. Every time you help a young person make sense of what they're experiencing online, you're contributing to that longer-term outcome we're aiming for.
Ultimately, success here isn't about whether every under-16-year-old disappears from social media. That's not going to happen. It's about whether, over time, we reduce harm, support mental wellbeing, shift expectations, and help young people develop healthier and safer relationships in the online world. And that's the change that, hopefully, we're starting to see.
Thanks, George.

Georgina Livingstone: Thank you, Paul, and I think, for many of our attendees today, you know, this is really interesting information, we're seeing small kind of studies come out around the impact of the social media delay, but I think hearing straight from you about what the Office of the eSafety Commissioner is seeing and hearing and what you're doing, I think is really fascinating, and looking forward to unpacking some of that as we continue on today. So, thanks so much, Paul. Wonderful stuff.
Going to throw to Dr Kate Hadwen now, and Kate, I'm wondering if you wanted to share with us a little bit about what you have been doing in your setting, in relation to the Wise Phone initiative, and how you've been addressing some of the concerns that you had as a school around social media.

Kate Hadwen: Yeah, thanks very much, Georgina, and thanks, Paul. That was really deeply interesting information for me as well, so thanks for sharing that. So, our Wise Phone initiative at Pymble actually began a year before the social media delay came into play, so we were kind of in this space for a while, and it really began with a conversation with some Year 9 students, and this was an area of research interest for me when I was working in university, so I already felt really passionately about it and was seeing lots of harm, as we all have done, through young people and their use of social media and technology in general.
And the girls were just saying to me they wish that somebody had taken a stronger stance with them, and I found that interesting. They weren't particularly cool kids who I would have expected to have said that to me. I expected that they would have said, no, definitely, we want our social media.
But that's not what they said, so we came up with a program to launch at the college and to trial, and what was fascinating about the program was, when we launched it to parents, we thought that we would go into a pilot offering where we would say to parents. Look, you can opt into this program. And when we said to them, we can offer you the opportunity to have a phone where your young person is not able to access any form of social media. So effectively, if you think about it as the parent and the family own the contract with the provider, the Telstra, you know, whoever the provider is.
And the college manages the app store, so that means that we manage exactly what the students do and don't have access to. We don't have any of their private information, we don't hold any of that. But we do manage what they have access to. Our parents were overwhelmingly excited by that, so much so that we had tears and things like that, where parents were saying, thank goodness for that.
And so we moved to an all-in model, where what we sort of said is, look, if you don't want to be part of this project, then you need to opt out, because obviously we recognize the more collective intent we can have around these initiatives the more successful that project will be. So that's where we began a year and a half ago now, and we decided to run a research project around that, just noting that there's really not a lot of research that actually is in this space of trialling initiatives that are like this. There's a lot of block and lock type of approaches, where students aren't allowed to bring phones onto campus, but perhaps they do in their pocket or wherever. Or it's a brick type of phone, where it's not something that they would feel comfortable taking out in public, or they might have a second phone at home, and some of our girls have that as well, and I'm happy to talk to that.
First of all, we started with one model, but now you can have your own phone transitioned over to this program, or an iPhone or an Android, so they can use the phone want, which is working much better for us. So, what have we found? We've found that it's been exhausting and painful and very time-consuming, is what we've found. So many man hours, but we're a believer. We want this to work, so we've really invested heavily in it. And the data has been surprising and pleasing for us, so we've had two rounds of feedback now, and just the third round of feedback's only come through recently. And we had 842 students, and then 805 students respond in those rounds of feedback, so a very, very good sample size.
And what we found, for example, is that sleep was incredibly impacted through this project. So, the number of young people who got way more sleep, significantly improved. So, we could see that 43% of those girls who were using the Wise Phone achieved the recommended hours of sleep per night, and only 26% of smartphone users achieved that. We also found the difference in the amount of time that the girls spent on their phone during the day was very different between the Wise Phone users and the normal smartphone users, so that was a great finding for us that perhaps those girls were better able to function in class, even though, obviously, we have the regular blocks in place that you guys would too. We found the girls were spending more time doing hobbies and things of interest, more time outside, more time with families. And so, now, that was a lovely gift for us to find that, that actually, they were doing things that that was really productive with their time, and healthy with their time, and I'll talk a little bit more about how we set that up with our families down the track.
So, there are lots of challenges that we've had along the way with this project, and I'm absolutely with Paul that we never, ever saw this as a panacea. We have roughly about 50% of our students who remain on the Wise Phone program, and about 50% of them who have switched to a different phone or have dual phones, and I can talk about use cases, but don't want to spend too much of the air time this afternoon, but I'm with Paul in that it's the drip that feeds the river. We need a multi-pronged approach to dealing with this situation for our young people. I do think we have a responsibility as the adults to try and come up with solutions to try and help young people navigate this, and as I was saying to our families.
We all know it's really tough for young people, don't we? I mean, if somebody said to me on a Friday night, when I'm really buggered, and I just want to go home and sit in front of the lounge and have a glass of wine and, I don't know, something really unhealthy like a pizza, if somebody said to me, well, now you have to have a glass of water and a nice salad, well I might object to that. And it might take me some time to get my head around actually thinking that's good for me. And so, I'm really proud of the way that our young people have responded to this thing that's really been thrown at them quite quickly, and where they're having not a lot of say. So, I think we've made great progress as a nation, and I'm exceptionally proud of what's happening. Is it perfect? No. Was it ever going to be? No.
But it is the drip that feeds the river. We're never going to get that torrent of water in one go. And, you know, I feel like if we all stay connected as educators and psychologists and psychiatrists and supporters of young people, then we can really start to turn the tide of what is a really unhealthy lifestyle for our youth. So, I'll get on to more about the next steps and so on, and would love to share with you some stories about some of the great outcomes that we didn't expect, like parents saying they weren't going to give their child a phone at all, and now their child has a lot more freedom, because they have a Wise Phone, they can catch the train safely, and do all of these other things that they never felt that their child could do, but now they have a safe way of accessing technology, they're able to do that. So, I might end there for the moment, I think, Georgina, but thanks.

Georgina Livingstone: Thank you, Kate. And I could hear and see many of our webinar attendees having a chuckle at your salad and glass of water analogy, and I would be horrified if I couldn't have my glass of wine and perhaps a pizza on a Friday night, so thank you. And I think it's a great example, what you've been able to share with us, and what we'll talk about as we move through our time together today, is some of those really practical learnings that you have been able to take away in the ways that you've supported your families, but also some of those outcomes that you've seen for the young people that are in your learning community. So, fabulous stuff. Thank you so much, Kate. We'll look forward to coming back and hearing more.
I’m going to hand to Nicola now, and although we don't really have a lot of information around what the impacts are for young people, there are some emerging impacts around the social media delay, so really keen to hear, you know, what you're seeing and hearing as a part of that.

Nicola Palfrey: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, George. And probably similar to Kate, we started looking at the impacts of social media on young people's mental health and wellbeing, at headspace National about a year before the, even the conversations about a delay came into place because we realised we had a very, kind of, blunt approach to it. We in the sector, often think, is social media good or bad? Should kids be on or off it? Which is not unusual for us, if you think it kind of goes in cycles, whether, you know, gaming or violent video, games over the years. We tend to get a bit polarizing, and so we started looking at it, and then about the same time that the legislation was started being discussed.
So we were heavily involved, along with lots of other mental health organisations, providing advice and guidance to government, because as Kate mentioned the speed at which this change has come into effect, and to go back a little bit because it helps inform where we are now, this feels very done to by young people, so we talked to young people, as it was coming into effect, they’re like, why us? What's happening? Why haven't you talked to us about it? You don't really understand how we utilize it. And I think one of the things that, as a consequence of that was, in the lead-up to it, there was quite a bit of anxiety from young people, families, educators, and others in the sector about what it was going to mean, because it wasn't as well as formed as we would like because the government announced it, they wanted to get it through, it was driven by powers that are stronger than us in terms of election announcements and commitments and so forth. 
So, there was a bit of, a lack of consultation meaningfully with the young people about how this could be done. And so, we spent quite a bit of time trying to work with the rest of the mental health sector to bring those voices forward, and the government were really open to that, and the eSafety Commissioner and office is always open to that, and they were very interested in those conversations.
And what we've seen is there was a lot of anticipation in the lead-up, and we had, I think around 70,000 people accessing the information, and that was young people accessing the information for young people about the ban, and then it dropped off as soon as the ban arrived. So in terms of coming to the headspace website, what we've seen since that is we have been tracking amongst headspace service users, so young people coming to headspace services around the country, what proportion of them talk about the social media ban in their conversations with their service provider, so that might be a social worker, a peer worker, a psychologist, etc. And it's been pretty low, about 8% of young people that the service providers put that as one of the things that's been spoken about, which probably isn't that surprising.
There's no secret, as Paul mentioned earlier, no pretence that this is universal, and so the initial chatter was a lot about getting around the ban, and the capacity, or ability to do that. I haven't been kicked off, or I just went back in, and those sorts of things, which is not surprising to anyone. We didn’t think it was going to be immediately successful. I think the metric of its success is a really good one to continue to talk about. What are we actually trying to achieve here? Some of what we are seeing in social networks, and young people are talking to us about, is a little bit of division of those that are still on, and those that have stayed off, or have been directed to be off. And that can be driven by a whole lot of things. Internally, they choose to be off. That's less problematic, I think, but where there's some division is where parents, for example, are enforcing the ban more strongly for some kids than others. And there's almost a little bit of social kudos in staying on and being allowed to stay on, and then we also hear from parents feeling pressure of solidarity, like, are we all going to enforce this and make sure that they are off? And then somebody cracks. So, nothing terribly stressful, I suppose, but just a little bit more. And what we're keeping an eye on is if you're already feeling a bit on the outer, and then this is another way in which you might feel outside of the social connection or group.
We also were concerned about those young people that really relied on social media platforms for connection, particularly those that might be isolated due to regional or remoteness, or in their community, for whatever reason, they don't have the supports as they're exploring identity, which might be to do with race, gender, sexuality, etc. and those online spaces providing a sense of connection and really protectiveness. There continues to be some concern amongst groups that are advocating, particularly for LGBTQI+ young people, or people that live at the intersections. We all have intersecting identities, and so that's something we're keen to keep an eye on, making sure that places like headspace and others keep young people aware that there are places for them to connect safely online, outside of the major platforms. 
The real opportunity that this whole decision to put in a social media delay and implementation of it has afforded us is bringing forth a conversation that I think a lot of us might have avoided with our young people, which is, I don't really know what's going on your phone, I'm going to take it off you every now and then, because it's making you moody, or you're not listening to me when I'm asking you to do things, or it's getting in the way of your sleep or study. But not necessarily exploring it as far as why are they so into it? What are they getting out of it? What are the good things about it? What are the harmful things about it? What makes them feel not so good? How come sometimes you bounce in and show me something and you're really happy, and another time you seem really sullen or withdrawn? So this has forced it to the breakfast table conversation, or in the car conversation, and that's always a good thing, and I think it's a real opportunity for the adults in young people's lives to be curious and empathetic about what this might be like for young people, and really importantly to keep the conversation going, because the last thing we want is kids to be more secretive about their online engagement, particularly because there's still great risks at times of them being exposed to harm and distress.

Georgina Livingstone: Thanks, Nicola. We're going to do a poll now, but while that's coming up and that's happening, I'm really conscious, like, what you said before about how young people have had this done to them rather than it being done with them, I'm really conscious that we're a bunch of older people, who don't fit into the young people youth demographic anymore, and young people's voice. And we did talk about how we could, responsibly represent young people's voice as a part of this conversation today.
And I suppose I'm just curious to hear from our panel. What are your suggestions for educators, on getting young people's views and opinions and hearing from them about what they actually think, in relation to the social media delay? And you go online, you can see lots of different clips of young people talking about what it's meant for them, and for some young people, it's meant nothing to them, because nothing's happened for them yet. As we get our poll results back, just throwing that one out to the group about young people's voice and including that in the conversation.

Paul Clark: I'd love to kick off, for us that was really key when we got wind of this legislation landing. How do we help implement this in a way that's going to have youth voice at the centre? And I think we're lucky enough to have our own eSafety Youth Council, who are really involved, and we really push them to get involved in the summits in New South Wales and in South Australia, so that youth voice was part of the discussion around how the legislation landed. But since then, we're getting some anecdotal impacts now, through our parent advisory groups, and through our education groups, but the research that we're undertaking that is really kind of long-term over the next coming years, and that's where the youth voice for us is critical. It's around how is it impacting on them, and so many different parts of their lives, so to ensure that this truly is evaluated, and it is one of those things, we don't know what the outcome's going to be. We may get to the end of this, and it's actually had no material effect, it may have been a great success, it's like, we're not sure. So, that youth voice and participation in that research is key for looking long-term, is this the right thing to do?

Georgina Livingstone: Fantastic. Thanks, Paul.

Kate Hadwen: We have a youth advisory committee, and they meet with me, and they're responsible for all things from oversight of policy to stuff that's happening on the ground. We take a really non-judgmental approach, so even though we have a compulsory Wise Phone model, we don't judge students who aren't on the Wise Phone. We listen, and we ask, help me understand. We also, with the apps that are open to our students, run a panel every couple of months and the students have to present to us the apps that they would like included, or to be open. They have to talk to what their understanding is of the risks, as in, why didn't we open it up first of all. For example, Spotify was recently raised, and we asked, why do you think we might be worried about Spotify? Well, we might have our headphones in all the time, we don't talk to anybody, head down, walk around, that type of thing. So, we run that kind of process as part of the Wise Phone program as well. I think making young people understand that, whilst we're not them and we'll never truly get it, we can really appreciate that this is difficult for them and honouring them during this process, and saying, you know, we're really proud of the steps you've taken, be they small, be they large, they're your steps, and we're really proud of that. That’s kind of our approach.

Georgina Livingstone: That's great and seeking that input also creates buy-in and ownership, so yeah, fabulous. Nicola, did you want to say anything about youth voice.

Nicola Palfrey: Youth voice is a key tenet at headspace, so at National, we have youth reference groups, First Nations advisory groups, young people, and family reference groups. Every headspace centre has a youth advisory group as a compulsory part of it, so it's key to what we do, and it's how we actually understand what needs to happen. Keeping the conversation open is really important. It's a really interesting time, because people are kind of on the edge of their seats wanting to see this, but it's a long-term reform, so I think keeping it on the agenda for young people, and having whether it's formal advisory groups, as we talked about, or just having yarns with kids throughout the day, asking how it's going, is important. I had a very interesting conversation with my son last night about the Manosphere, for example, and why we should or shouldn't watch it together, and it was one of those 10 o'clock at night, 45 minute, he had very strong views, and it was great. I didn't want to say, we should watch this together, because I think it's really important, you know? But he was in the mood for it, right? He was in a mood for a chat. If I'd brought it up another day, he'd be like, Mum, let's not, you know? So yeah, opportunistic as well as structured, I think, is always good. Sometimes those conversations happen opportunistically, and that's good too.

Georgina Livingstone: Yeah, and that's a good kind of, plug for Louis Theroux and his Manosphere documentary. It is interesting, it's on Netflix if anyone's interested. So, we've got our poll questions, answers in. So, this was a question around the impact of social media currently on students' mental health and wellbeing at your school. So, the crowd has spoken, and 70% of the crowd say that there's both positive and negative impacts. Benefits exist, but so do clear challenges. 17%. So, mostly negative. Increased stress, distraction, or anxiety are common or mostly positive. Students appear more connected and engaged. We actually anticipated that most of you would answer in the way that you did, because we really know that we're in early days, with the social media ban. So, I'm wondering, Paul, have you got any reflections on mental health and wellbeing for young people. You mentioned before, in your intro what we're hoping to see. Is there anything else that you would add in relation to mental health and wellbeing and the impact of social media? 

Paul Clark: Look, I think this is one of the tools in the arsenal. When this came out, there was a sense that this was going to be the be-all and end-all, and really fix it, but I think this is just one of the key pieces. For example, gaming platforms are completely excluded, but we've given legally enforceable transparency notices to Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Steam because of some of the concerns we've seen around online games and how they're being used in a sexual predatory way for grooming, but also by extremist groups and how that can spread violent propaganda and radicalise young people. Some of the work we've done around age-restricted material codes is trying to limit some of the really full-on adult content that's just not appropriate for young people and can be shaping their views around sexuality and relationships. 
We are also doing work around AI companions and looking at how young people are using them and what kind of impact that has on their ability to engage socially. So, it is important not to look at this as the one sole piece, but as part of shaping and scaffolding young people's experiences online so they're not being put under undue pressure or sent down rabbit holes that can be really detrimental for their mental health and wellbeing.

Georgina Livingstone: Yeah, and the idea of AI companions, I think, is one that we're probably going to be talking about more and more, when it comes to young people's, you know, connections, but also seeking advice around their mental health and wellbeing. And I think that feeds nicely into your analogy before Kate, around the drip that feeds the river. And we’ve got one intervention here that’s not necessarily a holistic strategy. I’m curious to know what your reflections might be on what other schools could learn from the outcomes of your approach with your initiative, the WISE Initiative. Like, you've been doing this forever. What could they learn?

Kate Hadwen: I think the interesting finding for us is more in the anecdotal information that's being collected by our heads of years and those types of people who are working directly with the cases that we see coming in. We've absolutely seen a reduction in cyberbullying, a reduction in harmful content being posted, and an ability to have a conversation with a parent to say, this particular situation has arisen with your child, but you do have a choice. Your daughter could be using one of the Wise Phones. We almost exclusively see students who find themselves in troubled waters being students who are not on the Wise Phone project, so it's given us other language to have those conversations with parents, which has been incredibly helpful for the team. 
What we've noticed most is that a lot of it is about parenting. I say that in a totally non-judgmental way, but parents are, in my experience, more afraid of the social exclusion that their child might experience than they are afraid of the harm that social media might bring to their child. So, they are making decisions based on fear around what might happen if their child is socially excluded. We set up an activity with our families where we had a hand-in afternoon, like a phone swap afternoon, and we set it up as a Wise Phone gathering. The students wrote down things they loved doing with their parents, and the parents wrote down what they loved doing with their children. Then we brought them back together and had them share that writing with each other, because we were explaining to parents that if you take something away, you have to fill that hole with something. That was a really successful activity for us, and parents and students got a lot out of it beyond just the social media piece. It helped them understand how to support each other and affirmed that they loved spending time together.
So, trying to help parents navigate that really difficult territory and with their young people, you know, we call it the pecker power. They're just pecking away at them, but when we set this project up, we spent some time with our families. I have 5 kids and they're all adults now. And, when my youngest was, on gaming, I remember harassing him one afternoon and saying, get off the game, you know, and he's saying to me, well, what do you want me to do? Like, you don't want to go and hang out in town with people, you don't want me to go and do this and that, so what do you actually want me to do? And it was such a point of reflection for me as a mum, you know? And so, yes, I had to pick up my end of the bargain a bit more, and so we set up this activity with our parents where we had, a hand-in afternoon, like a phone swap afternoon, and we set it up as a Wise Phone party. And they came in, they brought their old phone in, they got a different phone, or they, you know, got their phone converted over. What we did was got the students to write down a list of things that they loved to do with their parents, what really brought them joy to do with their parents. And most of the time, they're simple things, like baking, going for a walk, kicking a ball, whatever. And then we got the students, the parents, to write down what they loved to do with their children. And we brought them back together. And we made them sit and share that, you know, that writing of what they wanted to do together, because we were explaining to the parents, if you take something away, you have to fill that hole with something. And so, you as a parent need to try and find more time. Or manage your time so that you can spend time with your child, or whatever it is, to try and fill a hole, because you're creating a hole. When you take away social media, you're creating a hole. So how is that hole going to be filled?
And that was a really successful activity for us, and parents and students got a lot out of it, outside of just the, you know, the social media piece, but actually understanding how to support each other, and really affirming about loving to spend time together, so that was really helpful for us.

Georgina Livingstone: I think that's a great example of a way that parents and carers can be given a really practical strategy to actually, rather than just saying, don't do that, provide alternatives. But I think also, suggesting that you go out and do the things that we used to do when we were young, to connect with our peers, or to connect with others, and maybe connection between parents and carers and young people evolves over time, but those suggestions of, well, why can't you just pick up the phone, or why can't you go outside and kick a footy around, they're not necessarily helpful. Nicola, I want to come to you, and you talked a bit before about particular groups of young people where social media was a way to connect with their peers, or young people that might be vulnerable, or struggling with mental health. Or if a young person sees something online that is harmful content, we still want them to be able to reach out. We still want them to know that they can reach out for help. How has headspace seen the social media delay impacting children and young people's help-seeking behaviours? Have we seen anything there?

Nicola Palfrey: I don't think we can attribute it yet to help-seeking behaviours. What we're concerned about, including the eSafety Commissioner and other organisations, is making sure the messaging is clear to young people, families, and educators that they are not going to get in trouble for being on social media. The onus is not on the young person, nor on the family. Kids don't necessarily understand that, so they think they will get in trouble. Our fear is that if we don't continue to make that clear, then help-seeking could be affected. We need to proactively take a harm minimisation approach, in the same way that we would prepare and talk to our children around a whole lot of other activities they may engage in in adolescence. It's the job of adolescents to try new things, new identities, and take some risks. Whether that is about respectful relationships, consent, or alcohol and other drugs, we still want to be saying that if you are in trouble, please never pause, you can reach out, you can come to me, and we will always be on your side. That's a really important message to keep going with kids, because the social media platforms that are in the delay aren't the internet. The harms still exist. We met with the eSafety Commissioner again this week about continuing to provide resources and information on evolving harms and on the people who are seeking to enlist young people into a whole lot of things for their profit or benefit. So the key message is: keep talking about it, say I'm always here for you, and make sure young people know there is strong information on the websites about how to report, that they won't be in trouble, and that the focus is on perpetrators of harm, whether that is platforms or individuals, not the kids themselves.


Georgina Livingstone: That's great, Nicola, and I'm wondering, Paul, if you wanted to talk about, if a report is made to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, so if a young person's seen something harmful online, often there's a bit of fear that sits behind that. Tell us how educators could make a report to the Office of the Air Safety Commissioner, and what happens.

Paul Clark: So, I suppose, like, this is so important for us, and we've been talking about this from day dot at the beginning of the legislation. The last thing we want is kids to feel like they're threatened or not able to make a report. In the first five months of the scheme, we've seen no drop-off in our cyberbullying complaints, so we've been able to act for young people still, which is a bit of a relief for us. It looks like it hasn't had a material impact on young people being willing to step up. And I think, you know, I talked a lot about the platforms before, and it maybe sounds like just playing with words, but when you try to explain to kids that this isn't about stopping kids from joining social media, this is about stopping the social media platforms from allowing young people on, that's an important nuance. When a young person makes a report, we're acting on that content. We give no information about the individual who's made that complaint to the platform. So, it's purely content-based. If a young person complains to the platform and the content is there and the cyberbullying is serious, we'll go to that platform and say, look at this content, this has to be removed, and that'll be taken down. We never hand over information about the individual, the individual's age, their personal circumstances, nothing. So, I think it's really important young people know that whatever they say to us is in confidence. It is that content that is being removed.

Georgina Livingstone: Thanks, Paul. I think that's really, really useful for our audience to hear that from you. We have launched our second poll question, and I'm hoping you can see the results. So, this is about changes in social relationships since the delay was introduced. And again, the crowd has spoken. I feel like I'm on Survivor or something. It's not quite got that vibe, but the crowd has spoken. 72% of you have said that it's had mixed effects. 21% are saying that relationships appear to have strengthened between young people, and 7% saying that relationships appear to have weakened between young people. So, I think, again, we also anticipated that most of you would choose option C, and, you know, for those of you in schools, I'm sure that myth still exists, that C is the question that you choose on multiple choice tests, because that's the one that's most likely to be correct.
I'm interested to, in the last couple of minutes with our panel, there's been a question that's come through, and it's in relation to some recent research that was just, I think it was last week, that came out in the media, that in fact only one in four young people have reported that their social media use has been affected at all. But for those where it has been impacted, their access to information, particularly around getting news, and understanding politics, climate change, and all those other things, has been quite significantly disrupted. Where are the other places that young people are going to get their information if it's not on the platforms that they're not able to get into until they're 16? And what are your thoughts about that?

Kate Hadwen: I kind of have a wondering about it. I mean, there's so much, news that comes through feeds in social media. You know, I'm wondering whether they're feeling like perhaps they don't have access to news because they're used to receiving it in a certain way, and not in another way, I don't know. We don't see that so much, that they don't feel like they have access to news. Certainly, the one in four, you know, I would agree with entirely but if I flip that around and say, for the first year of an initiative, you're telling me that you had a 25% translation rate. Like, wow, that's awesome. Great job, team. And we all know intervention research, it's like a three-year drive, isn't it? To get real results in anything, you should expect three years of consistent hard work. To have 25%, think, you know, if we close our eyes and think about 25% of every young person who, perhaps is spending more time with their family and more time doing other things. I'd call that a wild success, but anyway, I'm just trying to flip the debate a bit.

Georgina Livingstone: I like your strengths perspective, Kate, and I think about what does this mean in a school or in an education setting, are there things that we can think about in that space around how are young people getting access to information that helps them to make really solid, clear decisions about being a citizen? What does that look like? I think we are about to very quickly run out of time, so I'm going to take this opportunity to thank our incredible panel. Thank you, Nicola. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Kate. Your insights have been, I think really valuable, and we really appreciate your time this afternoon, and for you being here with us so thanks for your contributions.
To wrap us up, if you want to join one of our follow-up workshops, please do. We would love to see you. Your State and Territory Be You team are hosting these, so you get to meet your local team. Scan to register, or we'll also send you a link. As we finish today, we will also invite you to complete a little survey. It's a one-minute, generally, very quick, survey that you will be directed to at the end of this session. But I think that is all for us for now. We really value your time. Thank you for being here. We wish you well. And have a wonderful afternoon. Thanks, everyone.