We need to do more to protect the screen generation: Expert

Parents and teachers need to wake up to the reality of the internet, an education expert has warned.

An Adelaide author and educator said she regularly sees children acting out sexually explicit and violent scenes they’ve watched online, and that more needs to be done to protect the youngest members of society from the influence of the internet.

Karen Keavy, a South Australian educator, counsellor and author who specialises in helping children and adults recover from abuse and neglect, said staff whose job is to deal solely with issues arising from technology were needed in schools.

Ms Keavy said she was deeply disturbed by recent reports from a western suburbs mother who said her 10-year-old daughter was threatened with rape by her male classmates.

However she said such incidents weren’t isolated, and parents, schools and the government needed to take the influence of unsupervised internet use far more seriously.

“It’s horrific, it really is,” Ms Keavy said. “I’ve been teaching for 20 years and counselling for eight. I’m in an out of schools all the time, working one-on-one with kids as a counsellor.

“They are seeing adult content – the average age that a child first sees pornography is seven.”

Ms Keavy said children were the product of what they had seen, heard and experienced and that in too many cases they were left to their own devices on screens.

Educator and wellbeing counsellor Karen Keavy. Picture: Supplied

She said society was changing at a rate never seen before, it was tough for parents and educators to keep on top everything children watched.

“But we need to keep up with that technology, we need to be really vigilant about what kids are viewing online.

“There are websites like esafety.gov.au where parents can go for advice on filters and what to do if your child has viewed disturbing material.”

Ms Keavy said more funding and resourcing needed to be available to schools.

“Training teachers is really important, but teachers are also under the pump. We’re playing catch up on the basics like maths and literacy after Covid and things like teaching protective behaviours falls by the wayside, which is really sad.

“It is expected that this curriculum is taught, but the wording used is that children are ‘exposed’ to it. So in many cases it becomes a box-ticking exercise.

“We need far more comprehensive education than that. In the mid-1980s, SA was a leader in the field of protective behaviours, consent and sex education. Sadly, this is not the case today.

“I think this is probably beyond the scope of teachers today, I think we need experts in schools.

“The Government, to their credit, have put wellbeing officers into schools but I think we need go further.”

Ms Keavy said that beyond pornography and violence, the internet had an impact in many other aspects of young life, from reducing attention spans to increasing body issues.

“It’s a challenging issue, but it’s absolutely necessary,” she said. “We have to help these kids.”