Ctrl Alt Del
Melbourne’s The King David School will launch next week its innovative program tackling children’s problems with social media.
David Opat, Vice-Principal Wellbeing and Head of Junior School, said, “Our children are at great risk of losing their childhood. An infatuation with screens and social media is stealing the precious time children have to enjoy the innocence and joy of being a kid.
The mental health of adolescents is being seriously disturbed by the social media world. There has been extraordinary increases in anxiety, depression, inattention and social disharmony. The change correlates with the uptake of smartphones.”
Next Wednesday, ABC media personality Charlie Pickering and psychiatrist Elise Bialylew will launch Ctrl Alt Del, an initiative that involves the School working in partnership with parents to curb social media use and tackle this mental health crisis.
Parents will sign a pledge not to give their children smartphones until they are in secondary school.
The school has undertaken a survey of current parents from Prep to Year 12 to assess the device usage (primarily mobile phones) of their children. Alarmingly, parents of secondary school-aged children say that their children are on a device for more than three hours a day, and they are mainly on platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. Parents have conveyed that screens are a great source of disharmony in their families.
The King David School’s program Ctrl Alt Del addresses social media use for younger students, before it becomes a problem.
“When children are young, we have greater control, and we can set up family rules that are easier to maintain. These then form habits”, said David Opat.
