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For Part Four of our social media series, Mahurangi Matters returned to Rodney College and discussed the proposed social media ban for under 16s with head of social sciences Pip Walters and Year 9 dean Lisa Te Haara.
Then we talked with Mahurangi College’s assistant principal Simon Shield and pastoral head of Year 7 Gareth McNaughten.
Like the parents in Part Two, the teachers mostly agreed that while there are risks posed by social media and negatives associated with its usage, an outright ban for under 16s would neither be practical nor effective, and hard to police.
Instead they wanted to see an emphasis on improving social media literacy with more resources and funding to educate not just teachers and students, but also parents.
They suggested: adding extra classes about social media to the curriculum, extra training for college staff, increased support for parents, and more guest speaker talks about cyber safety at their respective schools.
Mahurangi Matters discovered that the four teachers we spoke with had shared similar experiences dealing with under 16 students on social media.
At both colleges there had been a noticeable reduction in issues related to social media usage during school hours since the introduction of the nationwide “phones away for the day” ban in April last ye
Walters said before the phone ban there was a trend among students to take unauthorised photographs of classmates at school in unflattering moments – known as ‘muggies’ – and post them on social media platforms for ridicule.
“Photos were taken without permission – close-ups of kids eating or turning around – and used for mockery. Teachers at other schools even had their photos taken, which were then used to bully them.”
Te Haara said that because of the phone ban, bullying of students on social media now takes place mostly outside of school, however the fallout often follows them back onto the grounds the next day.
“They walk out the gate, and the phone’s back in their hand,” she said.
“Cyberbullying affects a child’s mental health, and they can’t focus at school. Some kids don’t get a break from it. We’ve had to do a lot of talking between students and also parents, as mediators, to try and solve these issues.”
Mug pages are still a problem, while other ways to bully via social media include encouraging a classmate to share inappropriate content then shaming them for it, or repeatedly leaving negative comments on a student’s posts on platforms like Instagram.
“Our first call is to ask, have you blocked the person making the comments? The kids know to do that now – but many of them didn’t before.”
Students also start Snapchat groups outside of school, which can become another way to bully, sometimes by excluding a classmate.
“The groups are about inclusion, but also the opposite sometimes – they can kick people out and that’s seen by everyone. Or someone will make a negative comment about a member and then they’ll all pile on,” Te Haara said.
“That’s a really hard one to go back and sort out because Snapchat automatically deletes the messages (after they’ve been viewed by all recipients in a group). Then it just becomes ‘he said, she said’. “But kids are getting screenshots of it so that we can try and deal with it.”
McNaughten agreed that the ephemeral message system on Snapchat made it difficult for schools to take action.
“One person makes a comment, and then others jump in. They’d never say it face-to-face, but online it’s easy, and it snowballs. It can go on for days,” he said.
“Unless there’s a screenshot, there’s nothing to go on. We can’t discipline on hearsay alone, even if we believe the student was targeted.”
Shield added that even when screenshots existed, they often captured only a small part of the conversation, making it difficult to understand the full context.
Like Te Haara, he had also received reports of kids getting removed from their Snapchat group by other students.
“Social exclusion can be cruel, particularly when it’s visible to everyone else. It’s like public rejection – everyone in that group knows it’s happened.”
He said he’d seen situations where group chats had turned hostile overnight leaving students upset and sometimes unwilling to attend school the next day.
“If it’s damaging somebody’s mental health and making them not want to come to school, that gives us the right to act on such things. We do have that responsibility if it’s leaking into school.”
McNaughten said there had been two or three instances of cyberbullying this year among Year 7 students where parents had contacted him to resolve the conflict.
“The advice I give is to visit the Netsafe website (NZ’s independent, non-profit online safety organisation) and report what’s going on. Netsafe’s been pretty good at shutting things down quickly.”
He added, “We also advise parents to remove their child from that app or platform, or ask them to block various people. It’s tricky because we don’t want it to sound like we’re telling them how to parent.”
But it’s not all negative.
The Snapchat groups, for example, are also used to share school work and collaborate on class projects.
Walters said one of her students had been struggling with their sexuality and living in a small town, it didn’t feel like there were many people they could reach out to, however they found connections through social media.
“Another student said that it was through TikTok that they realised what was happening in their home was not okay and she used it to seek help,” she said.
Te Haara added, “Other positives are access to mental health charities like I Am Hope NZ and especially Voices of Hope with (TikToker and mental health activist) Jazz Thornton, who visits our school – she’s really active on social media.”
So is the proposed social media ban for under 16s a good idea?
“A big concern of not having social media for our (under 16) teens is where will they go for that help?
Because presently they can find help for whatever they’re going through on social media platforms,” Te Haara said.
“Also, the horse has already bolted. We can’t go back and say, no you can’t have it. Instead, as teachers we have to educate ourselves about social media, the same goes for kids and parents especially.”
Late last year Rodney College hosted a ‘Parent Cyber Safety Evening’ with Rob Cope, one of New Zealand’s leading parent educators in online safety.
“As part of this we gained free access for a year to all parenting information around keeping our kids safe online including easy-to-watch videos,” Te Haara said.
“Also, in our health programme we cover social media and cyberbullying. We run that in Term One, at the beginning of every school year for our Year 9s, which we’ve been doing for at least three years.”
Walters said she was anti the proposed ban for a couple of reasons.
“First, how do you police it? Kids I spoke with said it’d be easy to get around the ban. Some were too young to sign up for Facebook or Instagram (which is set at age 13 by the platforms) so they signed up as one of their parents.
“Another concern is if AI is used to estimate or verify the child’s age based on the content they’re looking at – that seems very invasive and problematic.
“With the ban it just seems like the government is trying to get an easy win.”
In Part Two of our series, one of the parents, Cheri, said the onus should be put back on platforms like Facebook and Snapchat to make it safer (for under 16s).
Likewise, in Part Three clinical psychologist Linda Gow said there was an onus on the developers of social media platforms to put those guardrails in place so that it limited what young people could access.
However, Walters took a different view and said she didn’t have any faith in social media companies policing themselves.
“I think they are totally profit-driven and they don’t actually care about young people.”
At Mahurangi College, Shield said a ban wasn’t practical because teachers wouldn’t be able to police it.
“What strict measures can we put in place to make certain it’s not happening?
“‘Phones away for the day’ is easy to enforce because you can see a physical phone, whereas we’re not going to know (or be able to see) what social media a student is using.”
McNaughten agreed.
“There would be nothing tangible to put your finger on. When a parent says my child’s being bullied on social media, it’s hard enough now to find proof of that because often it’s happened and gone – particularly on Snapchat.”
Shield added that increased education about the risks of social media was a
more practical option.
“Not just for teachers, but students and parents too.”
McNaughten said Mahurangi College offered “a little bit of education around cyberbullying and being safe online, particularly for Years 7 to 10,
“Within the health programme, we may have two or three lessons for Year 7, so two or three hours for a whole year, and maybe an assembly with a guest speaker coming in. So we could expand what we offer.”
Walters said schools needed more resources and money to educate about social media.
“And we need more guest speakers to come and talk to parents, the kids, and teachers. Te Haara added, “If you’re educated about social media, that’s empowering.”
Part Four concludes our series and we’ll watch with interest over the coming months to see when the Bill to ban social media for under 16s will be introduced to Parliament by the National Party.
In the meantime, if you’d like to share your thoughts on the proposed ban please email editor@localmatters.co.nz.
For free support, advice, and education about social media and online safety in general visit: https://netsafe.org.nz/netsafe
To unlock Rob Cope’s ‘Parenting in an online world’ free-of-charge visit:
https://our-kids-online.teachable.com/courses/enrolled/1845395 Click on ‘Enrol now’. Enter code: rodneyfree
