New A to Z Guide to Children's Digital Mental Health offers essential reading

It aims to provide a key resource for parents, educators and professionals. And it also aims to provide balance. The book acknowledges that the digital world can be a scary and dangerous place but it also aims to help young people find ways to use it in a healthy, constructive and positive way.

Becca works for Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, which aims to “transform lives through innovation by supporting health and social care teams to find, test and implement new solutions at scale to the NHS’s greatest challenges, driving economic growth.”

Becca said: “I realised that parents and teachers and practitioners were struggling to support their children around digital well-being. I undertook a piece of research speaking to 450 parents, teachers and practitioners about their digital well-being concerns but also what they saw as the positives. I also spoke to about 150 young people to identify what digital well-being meant for them. I then felt I could create a book that would help parents, teachers and practitioners, providing them with practical skills and tips. The book focuses on subjects that were identified in my research and so I created an A-Z. It includes things like AI, sextortion, pornography, catfishing and social media.”

Driving the need for the book are the statistics which are striking: “There is data that tells us that one third of young children between three and five are using social media. Nine out of ten children own a telephone by the age of 11. Three-quarters of 13 to 17-year-olds have encountered online harm whether pornography or inappropriate material which is either racist or misogynistic, either images or information, or maybe cyber bullying. The statistics also tell us that around one third of children are spending at least 35 hours online a week. The average screen time for 13 to 18-year-olds a day is nearly eight and a half hours... which is a night's sleep!

“It is also about what we are accessing as well as how long we spend online. It is about excessive use. But it's also about making young people aware of the outside world and the importance of physical activity and actually being outdoors. The book tries to explain and to give tips and to give activities that help young people use the digital world safely and in a moderate way and in a positive way.

“It is not a book which is negative about the digital world. We live in a digital world. Our children are digital natives. The point is that we need to support them in a positive way. It is not saying that digital is bad. It is about helping young people to use digital safely and in moderation.

“Lots of parents are saying that they're struggling to understand and to keep up because technology is changing so quickly, and that's where this book can help. I think we've got a lot to learn from Australia and Denmark which are countries that have policies in place.

“But we also have to acknowledge that young people are using online for accessing information for creativity. They're using it for information and for advice or maybe for therapy or just for help. They're using it to be more socially aware and then using it to keep connected with other people. But we know that there are some key challenges that the digital world brings to children and young people.

“The book encourages parents and teachers to be good role models. As I say, it is also about giving tips around conversation starters and the conversations that we need to have.”

You can contact Becca through her website www.empoweringdigitallives.com and get the book either through Waterstones or Amazon.