Black Dog Institute, in partnership with the Bupa Foundation, has launched a free evidence-informed classroom program designed to help Year 7-9 students develop healthy screen habits and manage their digital wellbeing.
Informed and backed by research from the Future Proofing Study, Teens & Screens, it equips young people with the tools and knowledge to maximise the positive aspects of screen use while minimising potential harms.
Launched in 2019, the ground-breaking Future Proofing Study involves 6388 students from 134 schools around Australia, and aims to predict and prevent anxiety and depression in thousands of students aged 13-18, making it the largest mental health study of its kind in the world.
“We’ve been collecting young people’s screen time use and patterns of social media use for a few years now, and I guess every couple of years, we sit down with the students and say, ‘what’s going on for you? What’s bothering you? What are the things that you want to know more about?’” lead researcher Associate Professor Aliza Werner-Seidler tells EducationHQ.
The NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow and clinical psychologist says there needs to be a focus on educating young people about how to cultivate a positive online experience, what the risks are and how to mitigate them.
“The messages they are getting is that screens are terrible for your mental health and you should all get off them immediately, and I guess what they’ve said to us is, ‘we’re hearing the message, but the old people don’t understand – our lives are actually hybrid. It’s no longer the fake world and the real world – this is our world and our world also exists in the digital space and we want to understand more about it'.”
Werner-Seidler says teens are really curious to find out how long their friends spend online and what they’re doing.
“They would say things to us like, ‘I want to know how many hours I can spend on TikTok without poisoning my brain. I’m not going to get off TikTok, but I just want that information, because it might help me make some decisions’, right?
“So what we were hearing was this appetite for knowledge and it was not really being met.”
“Teens are constantly being told that screen time is bad — but that’s not the full picture,” Dr Aliza Werner-Seidler, pictured above, says. “Not all online activities are equal and there is nuance that needs to be considered in what activities young people are engaging with, and with whom.”
Werner-Seidler says while some organisations, like the eSafety Commission, are providing amazing information about online harm and harmful content, there really isn’t anything about how to cultivate a positive online experience.
“We did a review of the programs available, we reviewed the literature and we couldn’t find anything that really met this need,” she says.
The Black Dog Institute has worked with hundreds of young people in the development of the classroom program and married that work with the data, the literature and all of the outcomes that they’ve been finding from the Future Proofing Study and from the international literature.
What they’ve found is, it’s not actually about the amount of time you spend online - it’s what you do and who you do it with.
“Are you speaking to your friends? Are you speaking to strangers? Are you getting that social connection? Are you being bullied?
“And also what’s your vulnerability? What’s your mental state when you go online? Because there’s a bi-directional influence - a lot of young people might feel terrible and then they go online to try and help themselves feel better or connect with other people who are more like them. So it’s a really complicated relationship.”
Teens & Screens is an effort to simplify that complex relationship and give young people some information from the science in a digestible way, but also to provide some practical tools.
In focus groups, Werner-Seidler has been ‘astounded’ by how little students knew about how algorithms work and the business models of social media companies.
“They’re asking questions like, 'how come I get advertised sneakers? I really like sneakers, but how does it know that about me'?
“So we include all of that information – we let them know how algorithms work, we show them if they are having a negative experience online, if they’re being shown a lot of content that is making them feel upset or not good, we talk about some other things they might do instead.
“But then we also say ‘this is how you can reset your feed'.
Basically, the program gives students practical tools so that they can then make decisions that result in a better online experience.
“So not necessarily get offline, but essentially minimise the harm, but maximise the connection that they can get or the content that they see or how they engage - and that’s the real driver for how this program came about.”
There’s access to everything teachers need to deliver engaging lessons on digital wellbeing, including a step-by-step guide, interactive slide deck, and ready-to-use student resources.
Knowing teachers are time poor and constantly swamped with admin and compliance obligations, everything they need for the program is readily available and accessible.
“Teachers can go online and register, which then gives them access to a Powerpoint deck, a facilitator guide, and then potential discussion questions.
“There’s access to everything they need to deliver engaging lessons on digital wellbeing, including a step-by-step guide, interactive slide deck, and ready-to-use student resources.
“There’s also a parents’ flier which gives them nine practical strategies that they can talk to their young person about to implement some of the changes.
“So everything is available, and it’s been designed so they can pick it up five minutes before. They don’t need to be familiar with the material. There are scripts. It’s all there. It’s super easy.
“We’ve worked with teachers in the development to make sure that it kind of fits their needs, and we’ve done all of our accessibility training etc.”
In NSW, training is available for student support officers for a one-hour session, taking them through the materials.
The program is aimed at Year 7-9 students, mainly because the researchers wanted to start where they felt there was the greatest need.
There’s also some literature from the UK’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge, led by Dr Amy Orben, that looks at critical developmental windows.
“It turns out they coincide with that upper primary school, lower high school age.
“The transition from Year 6 to Year 7 is a high risk time, so it was a natural start for us.”
The appetite has been so great that work has already begun on adapting a program for Years 10-12 that will address the unique challenges faced by older adolescents. This program will be available later in 2025.
“We do so much parenting and teaching in the offline world, but not a whole lot in the online world.
“Our next step will be looking at Years 5 and 6 and actually doing something developmentally appropriate around the time even before they potentially get their first phone," Werner-Seidler says.
For more information or to access the Teens & Screens program, click here.
