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The Times is partnering with University of Auckland Media, Screen Studies and Communications student Kaitlyn Norton to publish a series of news stories examining New Zealand’s mental health sector. This is part three and looks at youth mental health and the online space.
- By Kaitlyn Norton
A senior staff member with local online safety organisation Netsafe says young Kiwis can experience a broad range of often isolated but interconnected harms on the internet.
“Netsafe would take reports on things like bullying and harassment, scams, grooming, image-based abuse, hate speech, exposure to harmful content,” says chief safety officer Sean Lyons.
“All of those things are subjects young people will talk to Netsafe about – they’re broad ranging and increasingly all connected.”
He explains Netsafe is engaged in a lot of work and prevention is a key part of it.
“We work directly with teachers and school leadership boards to try and make sure there’s practical digital literacy and digital citizenship skills within those institutions, and everybody’s aware of the importance of early intervention.
“The importance of seeking and getting help and what that help might look like, what the protections are that exist in legislation and what the protections are that might exist on individual platforms.
“We see research data that says … a significant percentage of young people [who] experience challenging online and safety situation, they seek no help, and we know that’s where the real danger sits.
“We also work with the platforms themselves and encourage them to make sure their reporting pathways are good and useful for young people and their platforms are designed to be as safe as possible.”
Netsafe encourages everyone to talk about what online harm is and to not feel shame or embarrassment from it.
“It is not your fault,” Lyons says. “You didn’t get there because of what you did.
“This is happening to you because of what somebody else did. Netsafe is a free, confidential service and can be an entirely anonymous service if that’s what people choose.”
People can make a report to the organisation by phone, text message, and online. The Times asked Lyons what Netsafe believes the government could do to reduce online harm.
“There’s no single silver bullet that’s going to fix online harm or the situations people find themselves in. There’s a shared responsibility here quite clearly.”
He says Netsafe believes online safety needs to be thought of as a core life skill, not something that fits into a lesson in some way, at school or a community group or at home.
“We continue to appeal to the platforms for greater accountability, in terms of what they did, especially around things like the way their algorithms might amplify potential harmful content, but also most importantly around the kind of safety-by-design aspects of what they do and their responsiveness to when harm situations occur.”
He says the government should focus on ensuring regulations allow systems to be safer and to make responsibilities clearer, while allowing for the kind of protections everyone wants when online.
When New Zealanders find themselves the victim of such harm, Netsafe recommends they capture as much evidence as possible.
“Take screenshots, write down dates, take notes of usernames, write down links,” Lyons says.
“Increasingly, we see those who seek to harm individuals online can post things for a while, remove them in hope that covers their tracks, and then repost them from time to time.
“If you don’t know who to talk to or if you don’t want to talk to Netsafe, find somebody to talk to, find somebody who can support you through this.
“And not just someone who’s there to say, ‘I’m here for you’, but someone who can be there for you and help you through the practical steps if you don’t know what to do, or support you through these steps even if you do.”
The Times asked Lyons what he says to young people currently experiencing online harm or its impact.
“What is happening to you right now matters,” he says. “Even if someone’s telling you ‘don’t worry about it, it’s just online’ or ‘that’s not important because it’s online’, we understand it matters and I’m sure you know it matters.
“Dealing with that is really important, because not dealing with it is likely to make things worse. We don’t judge.
“We don’t have a mandate to act in any other way than to support individuals to get to the right state and minimise harm.”
