End of exams
Godson No. 2 has finished his exams at last and we sent him a noisy ‘Hip Hip Hooray’ via Whatsapp voice note to celebrate his freedom. I am hugely proud of his calm, robust approach to the exams and of his dedicated revision; I also feel a great sense of relief that he can now put formal assessment behind him (for now at least) and look forward to ten weeks of school-free time before he start his new Sixth Form college in September. As I texted him my delight that he has made it through the intense weeks of public exams, I resisted any urge to ask how he is planning to spend his summer. Firstly, it is none of my business. Secondly, freedom means not having to answer questions from godmothers. The only thing that I actually needed to share with him was a reminder that he and his girlfriend are always welcome to come to us for rest, relaxation and masses of food.
By coincidence, the end of GCSEs coincided with the US Surgeon General’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, ‘Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms’ (17 May 2024). In this article, Vivek H. Murthy writes eloquently and persuasively of his fears about social media and the risks that it poses to young people’s mental health. Murthy has written and spoken of these concerns before and they echo those expressed by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Anxious Generation (2024). While Haidt argues that smart phones, social media and online gaming have ‘re-wired’ the neurology of children born since 1995, Murthy proposes using warning labels as a practical intervention to tackle the mental health crisis in young people.
As a teacher, I have witnessed this ‘great re-wiring’ and its consequences first hand. As a newly qualified teacher (all the way back in 1998), my students did not own mobile phones and social media played no role in their lives. Nowadays, my students have unbreakable connections to their mobile phones as the means by which they communicate, tell the time, set alarms, follow the news, flirt, shop, navigate, take photographs, make videos, and check on their homework via online learning platforms. When I ask students what they are going to do after tutoring sessions, they often tell me that they are going to relax with their phones for a few hours. And as a (mature) student myself, I know that mobile phones and social media are used throughout university seminars, lectures and workshops.
Young people are not, of course, the only ones to have been profoundly altered by their interaction with mobile technology and ‘socials’. I too have been ‘re-wired’ and I recognise it every time I listen to a podcast as a way of continuing my PhD research while stacking the dishwasher or when I scroll through Instagram instead of reading myself to sleep. I know, however, that my childhood was safe from the psychological risks posed by social media and therefore my neurology was protected from the particular anxieties that haunt twenty-first century teenagers.
Both Vivek H. Murthy and Jonathan Haidt have wise and thoughtful suggestions about ways of inspiring young people to review their relationship with online environments. Haidt is outspoken about his belief that phones should be banned from schools and Murthy recommends teen-focused organisations that encourage young people to review how they use their devices. As an educator, my responsibility is to follow this psychological research closely, and to work alongside parents and schools by encouraging students to think critically about their digital lives, to consider how they spend their time, and to evaluate the impact of what they see, read and hear.
In a personal context, I will not advise my godson about how he might enjoy his weeks of freedom or to impose my concerns about neurological ‘re-wiring’ on his chill-out summer. Instead, I’ll provide love and support by making myself available for regular, open and honest conversations - in person and on Whatsapp - about all the important things, including the perils of social media, but also the cost of council tennis courts, how to clean up after drunk friends who vomit on pavements, and the challenges of watching Wimbledon with Grandma (minus her hearing aids). These chats will be a delight, and long experience has taught me that maintaining channels of communication with young people is the best way to safeguard their wellbeing.