For years there was a tendency to stereotype the teenager as a slightly spotty, morose creature who lived in their room, only coming out to feed ravenously, dominate the remote control or plug into something. Meanwhile, the child was a sunny-faced being who played a lot and asked lots of questions, or a pestering machine who whined or cried for no apparent reason apart from to make the lives of adults around them miserable. Thankfully these are just stereotypes, but they do feed the imaginations of children’s workers who said they would never work with young people, and youth workers who would rather die than engage with anything under 13.
As age begins to blur in the same way as gender in our culture, children are increasingly being exposed to and experiencing things that were considered solely the domain of the teenager. Neil Postman calls this the death of childhood. Academics continue to debate what they describe as the modern construct of childhood but the reality is that in the same way that the printing press created a separation of those who could read (mainly adults) and those who couldn’t (mainly children), the saturation of multimedia technology into our culture has done the reverse. There are no barriers. One current advert for a major TV and internet provider suggests that children are the powerful owners of the information about how to operate all audio-visual equipment, and in many households this appears to be true!
Life issues and behaviours that were once the domain of or even a rite of passage for the teenager are now being experienced at much younger ages, so skills and insights once a requirement of the youth worker are increasingly needed for those working with children. Sometimes it feels like the rate of change in our culture is exponential, as software updates and hardware upgrades appear at a rate it is hard to keep up with, and national and international politics seem to be in turmoil. Below are four key life experiences with which both youth workers and children’s workers need to become expert at talking about and handling: perhaps inevitably mental health and sex, but perhaps less obviously loneliness and boredom.
Loneliness
Human beings, made in the image of a trinitarian God for a relationship with him, have a deep-seated need for connectivity: immediately after birth a baby seeks the face of its mother; pre-schoolers cry when left at nursery by their carer until they are distracted by those around them; teenagers spend hours chatting and every Friday evening the roads are jammed with adults travelling to spend the weekend with those they love. Mobile technology has given us even greater opportunities for connectivity, so why in 2014 did The Guardian publish an article entitled ‘Loneliness: a silent plague that is hurting young people most’? Apparently, our phones and social media do not provide us with the strong friendships for which we yearn, and, according to research by the Office of National Statistics, a high proportion of us have no one to rely on in a crisis.
As age begins to blur, children are increasingly being exposed to and experiencing things that were considered solely the domain of the teenager
Increasingly children are experiencing the same feelings of loneliness as adolescents, who become isolated, perhaps by embarrassment about the changes in their bodies, or not having / wearing the right clothes or brand, or fears about social incompetence. As screens are being used more and more as babysitting devices for younger children, much of the social learning done by watching other family members and friends is not happening, and many children are becoming less able to intuitively understand social nuances and therefore find themselves unable to make or keep friends.
For decades, for many young people, their youth worker was the one person they could rely on, and the person who helped them to integrate into a group that gave them the sense of belonging that they needed. This committed and skilful relationship development and people-skills training is, I believe, going to be required more and more of children’s workers as they help children to negotiate their way around the virtual and non-virtual world. Loneliness can affect many children and young people in a range of ways, but for some it becomes a significant contributor to mental health issues.
Mental Health
People entering adulthood now have been dubbed as the ‘M generation’ where M stands for media. Writers, such as Don Tapscott, wax lyrical about how this digital generation is more creative and collaborative than previous generations and this is the good news of the multi-media revolution, but there are downsides. We now have the highest level of mental illness diagnosis than ever before, with one in ten people under the age of 18 affected by depression, anxiety and conduct disorder, according to Young Minds. It can be argued that this is because we are better at diagnosing these conditions, and that as a society we are better at admitting anxiety and depression than before. Even though this might be true, the fact remains that more and more children and young people in this country are receiving treatment of one kind or another for mental health issues, with the UK scoring in the bottom third of six out of seven of the indicators for child well-being used by UNICEF.
Self-harm in particular has become an increasing problem in young people with hospital admittance because of it rising by 68 per cent in the last ten years. This too, is no longer the domain of the teenager, with a dramatic increase in instances among under-11s.
Childline report that it is the fourth most common reason for calls, and that they give about 19,000 counselling sessions a year for those self-harming.
This is an indication of the pain and stress that many children are experiencing, but the increase is also partly because it is, quite rightly, now more openly talked about and, less helpfully, there are many websites and blogs that curious and experimental children can search to find new and interesting ways of expressing deep-set pain and anxiety that they feel has no other outlet. What is worrying is that without due care and attention from those supporting the child, self-harm activities such as cutting and disordered eating can become as destructive and addictive as smoking or using stimulants like drugs and alcohol.
Children’s workers need to be as aware as youth workers of the signs that children might be engaged in self-harm (from the classic wearing long sleeves or not eating when everyone else does, to other more subtle changes in behaviour) and find ways of talking about feelings and how to deal with them as naturally as talking about stories that Jesus told, or miracles that he performed. The Childline website is full of information and guidance to help if you feel that this might be an issue for those you are working with.
One of the reasons why our children are now experiencing heightened anxiety and depressive symptoms is the pressure that they are under to be successful and popular. Young people often measure success by the number of likes, followers etc. With the increase of smartphone ownership in the under-11s, problems like this associated with social media are now filtering down to those who aren’t supposed to be, but are, inhabitants of the virtual friendship world.
Smartphones are great for catching up with everyone and organising life, but another danger highlighted by Danah Boyd in It’s complicated - the social lives of networked teens is a growing phenomenon of ‘helicopter parenting’, where not only do parents insist on knowing where their teenagers are 24/7 and ensuring they are instantly contactable, but where parents are also instantly contactable. Boyd points out that young adults are increasingly incapable of sorting problems themselves, when Mum or Dad are so readily available to helicopter in at the touch of a button. For children, this might not seem a bad thing, offering children more freedom, but I wonder,, if it does, or whether it just feeds our fear that something could happen to them, and means they are still less able to play outside.
One of the reasons why our children are now experiencing heightened anxiety and depressive symptoms is the pressure that they are under to be successful and popular
Boredom
The 2016 Ofcom report on media use and attitudes suggests that parents might be holding off the buying of a phone for children by giving into requests for gaming platforms or tablets, which they can feel more control over. But whatever platform children are using, they are definitely spending more time online, with average usage for 3-to-4-year-olds now being over eight hours a week, and 5-to-15-year-olds 15 hours a week. Much of this time is spent on YouTube, but a lot of it is also spent online gaming. Gaming can be a good thing as it is fun and can improve cognitive abilities, however the youngest iPad addict diagnosed was 4 years old. Again a stereotypical view of a teenager is someone addicted to their Xbox or PS4 but, actually, tablets and phones are just as popular among children, and potentially more harmful as their portability means that play never has to stop, even when and if you go out to play!
Again, the challenge for those working with children is providing culturally relevant engagement with technology and media which doesn’t feed the notion that it is OK to spend hours staring at a screen. Most youth workers have policies and strategies for detaching young people from their devices in sessions; the instance of devices may be lower in children’s groups but they can still cause a major distraction if there is not an agreed policy on where and when they can be used, and rivalry and feelings of insignificance can arise related to the ownership or non-ownership of particular brands.
Joyce Mercer has written some very interesting material for children’s workers on the effect that boredom is having on the spiritual well-being of children. She suggests that there has been a shift in responsibility from the child occupying themselves to the parents providing an endless stream of stimulation and entertainment. Unable to do this, parents are therefore enlisting the aid of multi media technology and finding themselves subsequently trapped in a screen time control battle, or the constant financial slog of providing the latest ‘age-appropriate’ toy.
Youth workers have for decades tried various strategies to encourage teenagers to engage with Christianity even though they might think of church as ‘boring’. Now children’s workers are feeling the pressure of having to provide endless high octane stimulation. Don’t get sucked in! Chilling, hanging, being is definitely the way to go for deeper, more sustainable relationships, and a little bit of boredom can lead to a great deal of creativity!
Sex
And last, but not least, children’s workers are going to have to get used to talking about sex, perhaps not in the ways that youth workers have been doing for years, but in practical and pragmatic ways that recognise that children are now exposed to images and language that are not helpful or edifying, not just in the extreme but perhaps more worryingly in the every day. Primary school children now regularly refer to each other as sexy, and clothing companies make a mint selling clothes to 8-year-olds that mimic the attire of Little Mix or whoever is their favourite semi-clad popstar. As a children’s worker you might not be leading sessions on ‘how far can you go?’ or ‘is masturbation OK?’ but you will need to constantly be combatting the harmful effects of a culture that tells girls that they are only valuable if they are sexy, and boys that they need to be hench, and that if they don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they are so ‘not worth it’. We probably need to start adapting Romance Academy resources for under-11s!
Despite all of this children are safer and healthier than they have ever been. They have more opportunities to experience and learn things than any generation before them. But, as with all things on this earth, until Jesus’ kingdom comes there are flaws and faults, some of which have been identified in this article. Knowledge is power. Whatever the age of the people with whom you are working, get to know their world. They are both incredibly knowledgeable and savvy about it, and incredibly vulnerable. Get involved so that you can both protect them and learn from them.
