Beyond Online Safety: Social Media, Smartphones and Safeguarding Young People
🏷️ From £90
🎧
📍 Online
🎥 Watch live or on catch up
Course outline:
Online safety is an ever-evolving area of safeguarding, with social media and smartphone use playing an increasingly significant role in young people’s lives, relationships, wellbeing and development.
This webinar will explore current online safety concerns alongside the wider impact of social media and smartphone use on young people’s development, identity and sense of self. It will consider how patterns of phone and social media use can become habitual or addictive, and how online spaces may be used as an avoidance or coping mechanism when young people are experiencing difficult emotions or situations.
The session will support safeguarding practitioners and those working with young people to look beyond individual online incidents and consider the underlying behaviours, needs and vulnerabilities that may be influencing a young person’s online activity.
Training topics:
- The current online safety landscape — headline concerns only
- Understand how social media can influence young people’s identity, development, relationships and emotional wellbeing
- Smartphone and social media use as an avoidance or coping mechanism
- Recognising when phone/social media patterns signal a wider wellbeing or safeguarding concern
- The impact of social media on young people’s development and sense of self
- Balancing protection with children’s voice and rights in how we respond
Learning outcomes:
Delegates will:
Speaker:
Michelle Smorfitt, Resilience researcher, Workplace wellbeing consultant, and Coach
Michelle Smorfitt is a resilience researcher, workplace wellbeing consultant, and coach. She holds an MSc in Integrative Health and Wellbeing (Distinction) from the University of Westminster and was awarded a PhD studentship in 2023 to continue her research on student wellbeing. Michelle is the Resilience Lead at Persyou, where she develops innovative approaches to measuring and building resilience in education. Her work focuses on helping young people adapt to change, manage pressure, and thrive in an increasingly complex and digital world.
