{"id":4484,"date":"2025-08-29T12:08:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/?post_type=article&p=4484"},"modified":"2025-08-29T12:08:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:08:45","slug":"principals-post-on-empowering-young-women-13","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/article\/principals-post-on-empowering-young-women-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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As parents and carers, it is essential that we stay informed about the influence of technology and screen time on our children\u2019s wellbeing and development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To support this important conversation, I encourage you to read the following article, published in The Australian on August 15, 2025, which explores:<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Screen addiction is real<\/strong> \u2013 Teens feel overwhelmed by constant scrolling, with many admitting it affects their focus, motivation, and wellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Mental health is declining<\/strong> \u2013 Anxiety, depression, and self-harm rates among young people have surged, with social media a major contributing factor.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Social media is engineered for engagement<\/strong> \u2013 Apps like TikTok track every interaction to deliver addictive, personalised content that keeps teens online.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Teens share more than they realise<\/strong> \u2013 Personal data is used to shape behaviour and spending, making them vulnerable to manipulation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    In my upcoming Principal Post in Week 9, I will build on the ideas presented in the article below and share reflections from adolescents themselves about how technology is shaping their daily lives, relationships, and learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    No phone for a week? I\u2019d rather die.\u201d Tara, Mila and Kayla, best friends aged 15, have just \u00addiscovered their week-long holiday camp in the West Australian wonderland of Shark Bay is going to be phone-free. \u201cYou\u2019re kidding, right?\u201d Peak excitement about seven days of kayaking, fishing and camping collapses into horrified \u00adsilence. \u201cNext you\u2019ll be telling us there\u2019ll be no phones on the bus,\u201d says Mila. I smirk. The girls groan. \u201cNo way!\u201d The bus ride is 14 hours. This is a Gen Z catastrophe.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    But three days out from departure, I ask the trio how they\u2019re feeling and it\u2019s not what I\u2019m expecting. \u201cI\u2019m so excited to miss out on seven whole days of social media,\u201d says Mila. \u201cI\u2019m gonna get my life back. I think it\u2019ll make me really happy. When I\u2019m on my phone I\u2019m so lazy. I\u2019m just in that cycle of endless scrolling.\u201d All three nod vigorously. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to have all this time with my friends I\u2019d usually spend on my phone,\u201d says Tara. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to be in \u00adnature. To feel better about myself. To be free.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These are smart, sweet girls from solid families. They turn up to school, play sport, do their homework, hang out with friends. All three are in robust physical health. But like teenagers across the Western world, they\u2019ve grown accustomed to carrying with them, at all times, a portal into a parallel universe \u2013 their smartphones. The tech behemoths of TikTok (video reels), Snapchat (messaging) and Instagram (reels and posts), give teenagers the very things they crave but don\u2019t have: status and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Social media is the biggest change to teenage life in 50 years. \u201cTo have something so entertaining just sitting there next to you, you know, begging for your attention \u2013 it\u2019s like a drug,\u201d says Mila. \u201cAnd there\u2019s not a lot of reasons to shut it out of your life because absolutely everyone is stuck to their phones \u2013 it\u2019s your one source of information, it\u2019s how you communicate with friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Kayla has had a smartphone since she was nine. \u201cIt\u2019s such a normalised thing to be constantly on your phone,\u201d she tells me. \u201cBut like, it\u2019s really bad for you. When I see how many hours I\u2019ve been scrolling, OMG, that\u2019s so much of the day I was just sitting doing nothing when I could have been doing better things. It\u2019s kind of worrying, you know, especially for my \u00adgeneration, because we\u2019re growing up like this is normal. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Tara, too, is dismayed by her dependency. \u201cWe need it for entertainment, but it makes me lazy and unmotivated and that scares me. My attention span is dwindling so fast, I\u2019m kind of freaked out because it affects my study. I can\u2019t concentrate. My phone\u2019s like a magnet. I\u2019m \u00adpermanently distracted and then I feel really bad about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Nine months ago, I began interviewing \u00adAustralian teenagers about how they feel about themselves on social media. Why? Because \u00adno one was asking them. Rates of depression and anxiety in adolescents are in hyperdrive, and seeping down into childhood: Australian emergency admissions for self-harm in girls aged 10 to 14 has more than tripled since 2009. The suicide rate among teenagers aged from 15 to 19 is now double what it was in 2005. Young men have become less likely to hurt each \u00adother and more likely to hurt themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    According to the Australian Bureau of \u00adStatistics, 29 per cent of girls and 17 per cent of boys aged 15 to 24 were diagnosed with depression or anxiety in 2023. The current generation of teens is on track to become the loneliest and most socially isolated cohort in human history. The data is grim. Our kids are not OK.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    And, here\u2019s the thing: they know it. Kids born this century are well aware they\u2019re the guinea pigs of a giant psychological and commercial experiment to keep them wired at all times. The roller rinks, pool halls and milk bars of previous generations have been discarded in favour of virtual hangouts on apps, platforms and websites. The open secret among the under-16s is that they already know social media makes them feel bad about themselves. They just don\u2019t know what to do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Every interview and portrait on these pages has been vetted and approved by a parent. The majority of these mums and dads, from across private, public and disadvantaged schools in three states, say they feel helpless to separate their children from their phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And not one child I interviewed hesitated to admit they were \u201caddicted\u201d to their screens. \u201cTotally,\u201d says Mila. \u201cI only know two or three girls out of a hundred who\u2019d say they aren\u2019t \u2013 and they have really strict parents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The interviews conducted for this story with young people aged 10 to 19 have been unsettling and, at times, alarming. One 10-year-old blithely tells me he\u2019s \u201csuper-addicted\u201d to porn and \u201cfunny racist reels\u201d. A trio of Year 8 boys in Adelaide\u2019s Mansfield Park giggle with self-\u00adconsciousness when one of them says: \u201cThe best reels on TikTok are the beheadings. Girls hate it when we share those.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d adds one of the boys, Elijah, aged 12, \u201cYou can watch funny fails of people dying in dumb ways. Like in car smashes.\u201d All three snort their agreement. Jett, 13, pipes up with the understatement of the day: \u201cI reckon our generation\u2019s gonna be messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Anika, 15, from the coastal suburbs of Perth, says her phone addiction has become impossible to manage. She points out that kids have had free reign on social media for a decade.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cWe\u2019ve watched anything, any time we want. Like, I was only ten when I saw porn for the first time, and I was so shocked by it but then so curious that I got low-key addicted for a while and had to talk to Mum about it. Which makes me worried about what my little brother will be watching soon \u2013 he\u2019ll be getting hold of porn and thinking weird stuff is OK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Anika shows me her screen time from a recent weekend: \u201cFriday, eight hours 57 minutes.\u201d She gasps. \u201cSaturday was nine hours 31 minutes \u2013 look! I stayed up on TikTok until 2am. I can\u2019t last a day without it. Probably not even an hour. To delete that would be like turning off my life support. It\u2019s like an oxygen tube to my friends because my phone is my real life more than my actual life. Unless everyone stops, there\u2019s no way any of us can stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Is rampant social media use the root cause of the mental health calamity? It could be argued that the teenage years were always volatile. It\u2019s the nature of adolescence, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But psychiatrists agree that social media is producing a teen \u00adculture that is brutalising and isolating. Last September, the global Lancet Psychiatry Commission published its finding that young people\u2019s mental health has entered a \u201cdangerous phase\u201d, concluding: \u201cNow might be our last chance to act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Tech giants, their lobbyists and enablers dismiss these concerns as overblown moral panic, insisting that social media is for the most part blameless \u2013 better still, it fosters connection. They argue that any \u00adgovernment regulation of social media disempowers young people. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    And yet, if today\u2019s teens are more \u00addigitally connected than ever, why are they \u00adsuffering an epidemic of loneliness \u2013 a crisis that eclipses the teen angst of any previous generation? Evidence shows the launch in 2007 of the first iPhone with its inbuilt \u201cselfie\u201d camera, followed by Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), and TikTok (2017), coincided with a marked decrease in adolescent sleep and the time they spent with friends \u2013 two factors linked to the deterioration in young people\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Don\u2019t be fooled that kids just log onto social media and browse. They show and tell friends \u2013 and strangers \u2013 in vivid detail where they live, what they like and who they know, a smorgasbord of data for those wanting to manipulate their spending habits and behaviours. TikTok\u2019s algorithms ingest a teenager\u2019s every skip, share and comment and spit it all back to them with more and more content \u201cpersonalised\u201d to their likes and wants. The Chinese-owned app has spawned myriad global internet trends \u2013 viral dance challenges, hair slugging, so-called \u201ccloud lips\u201d makeup \u2013 and a dizzying kaleidoscope of memes and maxims, all designed to successfully keep eyes glued to screens. It\u2019s called engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Mrs Christine Harding, Principal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion. As parents and carers, it is essential that we stay informed about the influence of technology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","article_category":[],"article_tag":[],"class_list":["post-4484","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/4484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_category?post=4484"},{"taxonomy":"article_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/olmcburraneer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_tag?post=4484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}