From the Head of Junior School

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This week, I had the opportunity to partake in the Alliance of Girls School Australasia Summit on Girls’ Education. The conference ran over two days and guest speakers were varied from around the world. What stood out for me was the underlying message of the implications of the smartphone, its usage by us all and especially the impact on this generation of young girls.

There were two presenters that stood out for me in terms of interesting perspectives during the Summit.
 Firstly, Dr Lisa Damour spoke about Stress, Anxiety & Girls. She relayed different strategies to normalise the experiences of stress and anxiety and, in doing so, opened new paths for cultivating resilience in girls. There were a lot of tips even for adults in her presentation and I encourage you to read a few of her articles that she has written for the New York Times.
Secondly, Dr Jean Twenge spoke about the iGen: Generation and understanding the smartphone generation of girls. Her synopsis was that today’s school-aged children and teens are now iGen (born after 1995), and as such, they are the first generation to spend their adolescence with smartphones. Dr Twenge engaged us with some very interesting statistics and trends with surprising results, most especially, iGen’s spend more time communicating electronically and less time with their friends in person. They are also spending less time sleeping which according to her research may, as a result, be more likely to struggle with unhappiness, anxiety, and depression.

The discussion's point of interest was the huge shift in socialisation over the past 10 years (going from meeting in-person to online social media), the power of isolation in our daughter’s generation and the rise of anxiety and loneliness that the smartphone can have the potential to cause. These points were also prevalent in the presentation of Madonna King last Monday evening in which she also highlighted many of these key issues. The question arose as to why as girls get older, the socialisation or friendship rituals that involve “playdates” morphs into mostly “online” communication. When did comparing ourselves with others around us, move to comparing ourselves with the unrealistic and idealistic world that girls are exposed to through different forms?

Whilst there are a lot of positive impacts of the smartphone, teaching our children how to use this positively, with strong boundaries seems to be becoming more essential. However, it is a timely reminder of the philosophy that the values of friendships and relationships are the same whether it is through the use of social media or in person, at school or away.

That is why the THINK analogy we use at school is so important. By reminding ourselves about how we communicate to each other by using THINK regardless of how old we are or in what way, is a valuable tool for our girls to have in their kete as they grow older.

T= is it true, H= is it helpful, I= is it informative N=is it necessary, K= is it kind.