AROn Wednesday 13th July, we hosted our second online event with TikTok ‘Understanding Digital Wellbeing’. This exclusive free online event brought together hundreds of professionals from across the UK to hear from a select number of guest speakers about digital wellbeing. The session included the latest research and insights around Digital Wellbeing as well an introduction to some of the most supportive tools and resources available to professionals working with children and young people. If you missed the event, don’t worry you can watch it right here!
What Was Discussed?
The two-hour event included segments from David Wright (CEO of SWGfL and Director of UK Safer Internet Centre), Ken Corish (Online Safety Director at SWGfL), Nikki Soo (Harmful Content Public Policy at TikTok) and Carolyn Bunting (CEO of Internet Matters). Boris Radanović (Engagement and Partnership Manager at SWGfL) moderated the event. It included a 30-minute panel discussion with all our guest speakers focusing on some of the most talked about topics for digital wellbeing. The session ended with an extensive Q&A at the end with audience members posing their own questions towards the panel. Here’s a breakdown on what each guest speaker spoke on:
Ken Corish – ProjectEVOLVE
Ken Corish started the session by introducing ProjectEVOLVE, our very own digital literacy toolkit that has seen a tremendous response from education settings throughout its development. He spoke about what impact it had seen since launching whilst offering some insight into how many schools were currently using the vast amount of resources available. This was followed up by showing how children and young people are responding to some of the many topics and resources available, with some fascinating insight into where understanding lies within these areas.
Carolyn Bunting – Internet Matters
Carolyn Bunting followed by introducing some of the latest resources, research and tools available from Internet Matters. She spoke around the new Digital Matters platform, which uses interactive lessons for children and young people as well as what insights were seen from their index report launched earlier this year, looking at Children’s Digital wellbeing. One interesting finding showed that ‘children who say their parents are on their phones or devices ‘all the time/quite a lot’ when they are trying to talk to them, their negative emotional wellbeing score is double that of children who say their parents ‘never’ do this’. The segment was concluded by showing some of the data around a recent intentional use report (compiled with TikTok) that researched how agency is supporting wellbeing.
Nikki Soo – TikTok
Nikki Soo started with a short explanation outlining what community standards are enforced on TikTok. This was followed by how their moderation teams work and how they respond towards harmful content on the platform. Information was then given around what removal rates they had seen towards harmful content (for the first quarter, over 102 million videos were removed) This was followed by introducing some of the latest features that TikTok have launched recently to address digital wellbeing before ending with a response towards the research undertaken with Internet Matters.
David Wright - SWGfL
David Wright was the final speaker and gave an extensive overview on what helplines and support services are available to which audiences. David gave updates on the Revenge Porn Helpline, Report Harmful Content, POSH and the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Support Service. This was followed by outlining some of the latest trends (including reputational issues and harmful challenges) that had been seen across the POSH helpline and the HSB Support Service. David also gave a short introduction to the recent SWGfL Digital Wellbeing hub that provides information, guidance and resources for supporting professionals with digital wellbeing.
If you missed the event, please do watch the recording and take a look at some of the resources discussed on our event page. We would like a to say a huge thank you to everyone who joined us and we hope to see you at the next one. To stay up to date with our upcoming events, you can follow us on Eventbrite. Make sure to sign up to our newsletter to get notified about upcoming events and our latest updates.
