This week, as we approach Remembrance Day, we have focused our thoughts on those affected by conflict all over the world but especially those suffering as a result of recent violence in Israel and Palestine. Today, we held a two-minute silence and, before half term, we held a silent vigil, providing space and time for members of our community to come together to reflect. During the vigil, I was struck by one of the quotations Mrs Dowglass, Head of Religion and Philosophy, had placed on table:

“So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

― John F. Kennedy

I shared this quotation with the whole school on Monday as a prologue to exploring a humanitarian approach to world events – remembering all those suffering, including members of our own community.

Today, in a second whole-school assembly, I reiterated our first school aim, to be “kind to others and kind to ourselves”, as we set aside time to acknowledge our own thoughts and feelings. The images we are seeing in the news are deeply upsetting, and we felt it was important to take time as a community to understand the impact this can have on us all, but especially on young people, in the form of vicarious or secondary trauma.

We were fortunate to have three professionals in this field in school this morning to talk to students. Bernie Gravett, a former police officer, with a focus on human and child trafficking, was joined by forensic psychologist, Lisa Davies, and Dr Laura Tinkl, a clinical psychologist specialising in childhood trauma. Their brief was to talk about the impact of social media exposure and news coverage of war and on adolescent mental health.

What we heard was fascinating. It was no surprise to hear that, due the rapid rise of social media, psychologists are still playing catch up in terms of understanding the impact it is having on young people’s mental health and on developing brains. While, historically, we would receive a daily dose of news, at a given time, now it is intrusive and all-pervasive. We learned that the war in Ukraine was dubbed the “first social media war” and how it highlighted the ways in which unregulated news coverage affects our mental health. One of the most starting statistics we heard was that 2013 studies of the Boston Marathon bombings found that people who watched 6 or more hours of news coverage experienced more acute stress than those who were present at the actual finish line.

Dr Laura Tinkl talked about why adolescents are more susceptible to vicarious or secondary trauma by viewing distressing scenes on social media: the big “peaks and toughs of dopamine” adolescents experience due to chemical changes in the brain, make them excellent at risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking, but dopamine is, of course, highly addictive, making young people susceptible to being exploited by social media and tech. In addition, younger people have fewer memories and experiences to help them contextualise what they are seeing and to allow them to weigh up the probability of it happening to them.

At the end of assembly, students were given some practical advice to help them manage their responses to viewing distressing events through social media. These included,

  • Turning off notifications – instead, set aside time to check regulated and reliable news sites, daily rather than hourly.
  • Ensuring that you are in a good place to absorb shocking or upsetting news when you do choose to view it.
  • Questioning the validity of sources of information online – hide or scroll past feeds if there are not from a regulated source
  • Staying connected with others
  • In the case of war, staying in a place of agency and being engaged with the response to the crisis (for example, writing to representatives, donating to charities or supporting local community members).
  • If distressed, talk to a trusted adult.

Our assembly concluded with a reminder that, while the mental health risks associated with social media are significant and undeniable, there are professionals – like our three visitors today – working with children and advocating for their mental health to the people who genuinely might be able to effect change.

In the meantime, our students were given the message: “take care of yourselves, because you are all important” – not only in terms of their present and happiness and wellbeing, but in terms of them being a generation of problem solvers, out-of-the box thinkers and risk-takers, who have a part to play in shaping the future.