London - The rise of social networking sites is putting children at greater risk of bullying and body image worries than ever before, a leading headmaster has warned.
Constant scrutiny on websites such as AskFM, Little Gossip, Facebook and Instagram leaves many teenagers feeling like “the hopelessly inadequate stars of their own second-rate biopics”, Andrew Halls said.
He said no previous generation had endured so much attention from peers who “adore, revile or all too publicly ignore on a moment-by-moment basis”.
Halls, the head of King’s College School, Wimbledon, a boys’ day school, urged schools to instil “grit” and emotional resilience in pupils to help them cope with the pressures of modern life.
Halls said anonymous chat sites such as AskFM and Little Gossip left children “vulnerable to cruel and absurd slanders that, for some, can be literally life-ending”.
Teenagers now live the “tortured drama of their adolescence under the scrutiny of hundreds or even thousands of others”, he added, which often leaves them feeling “small and vulnerable”.
“Social networking sites require every 21st-century teenager to live his or her life under the eye of an electronic adjudicator far more cruel and censorious than any examiner, school teacher, or parent,” he said.
“No previous generation has spent so long online, ‘liking’ and being ‘liked’, or devastatingly ignored, in the OCD world of never-ending updates, status change, Instagram, AskFM, Little Gossip and Facebook. No wonder that every teenager can feel like the hopelessly inadequate star of his own second-rate biopic.”
Girls and boys of all backgrounds are affected due to the “democracy of the internet”, argues Halls.
And he said some independent schools had been “woefully reluctant” to discuss mental health issues, estimated to affect one in ten young people.
He added: “Girls from aspirational families are the fastest-growing group using mental health services, as they strive to achieve more and more impossibly brilliant results.
“We know that boys and young men are much more affected by body image pressures than was the case twenty years ago.
“And now we know this can afflict the public school 1st XV hero addicted to fitness routines and diet supplements just as much as the forgotten boy in the corner of a comprehensive school locker-room cutting runes of self-loathing into his arm.”
Halls added that young people are increasingly “tormented” by a “cult of self-consciousness”.
“They know that the world is competitive, and they are surrounded by images not just of the impossibly beautiful, but of the incredibly wealthy, or the incredibly bright. How can they compete?” he said.
“Then they see in their school a thousand posters admonishing human beings for their part in global warming, famine, pollution, over-population and war.
“We mean well when we lecture our pupils in this way, but to what degree do we present them with a challenge that seems so impossible the only response is to crouch with arms crossed before their eyes?”
Halls said that the problems faced by 21st-century teenagers “cut through class and gender stereotypes”.
“Almost every bright sixth-former from an affluent family will know of someone who is suffering from a body image-related problem. But we also know that the UK invariably tops Europe’s league table for teenage suicides, and these are frequently of less well-educated or less affluent children.”
A recent Government study found that almost a quarter of children live with parents who are in an unhappy relationship, with a higher proportion among poor families, he said. These children are more at risk of mental health problems or drug and alcohol abuse.
“These issues affect everyone, children and parents, in 21st-century Britain – not just dysfunctional homes, and not just affluent ones,” Halls said.
He added that ‘true grit and resilience training’ was intended to show children they could “change things both within them and around them for the better”.- Daily Mail