It’s everywhere in the news.
We're learning that we must be acutely aware of the risks of online use for children and adolescents. That we must be mindful of the sexualisation that’s present in the vast majority of fashion marketing, television advertisements and music.
The Federal government and opposition have both endorsed a social media ban for teenagers under 16.
Further, the Albanese Government committed funding in this year’s budget to addressing easy access to pornography for young people to tackle the extreme online misogyny which is fuelling harmful attitudes towards women.
The question remains; how can we help at a grass-roots level?
The Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle is taking a proactive approach to educating young people as well as parents, carers and teachers on the impacts that the online world presents.
Chief Operating Officer of Catholic Schools, Lisa Tierney, said following impactful sessions centred around respectful relationships with Melinda Tankard Reist and Daniel Principe at Catherine McAuley Catholic College, Medowie, the Catholic Schools Office will roll out further sessions with Tankard Reist and Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones across all schools in the Diocese.
"We're fully aware of the serious dangers and consequences of online use for our students. Our goal is to promote respectful relationships among them— whether it's with their peers, friends, family, or themselves,” said Ms Tierney.
“We want to take a proactive approach to educating young people as well as parents and carers on the impacts that the online world can have now, and into the future.
“Our firm focus on improving relationships utilises significant resources from the Catholic Schools Office. It’s one of the most important and hopefully impactful initiatives we will roll out,” she said.
In addition to the Respectful Relationships program, the Diocese is exhausting all avenues to support parents and carers in navigating the online safety of their children.
As part of National Child Protection Week, the Diocese’s peak parent body, The Federation of P&F Associations has partnered with the Office of Safeguarding and the Cyber Safety Project to deliver a webinar. This webinar detailed valuable resources and actions that can be implemented to support young people in their online use.
Industry partners are also being consulted, with Prevention United’s Youth Advisory Group advocating for the positive power of social media when used correctly, facilitating connectedness, storytelling, engagement, creativity and sense of community.
They have called on the Government and policy makers to continue the conversation, ensure the voices of young people are heard, and develop evidence-based solutions to ensure that young people are safe online.
Ms Tierney said supporting our male students and empowering our female students won’t stop with information sharing and our active engagement with parents.
“This isn’t a tick-the-box exercise, this is us working to be on the front foot of a culture change and hopefully, it will ensure our students have healthy relationships in all aspects of their lives far beyond their schooling years.
“Trying to disrupt these social norms is daunting and will no doubt be a challenge, but it is something our Diocesan Catholic Schools, our principals and all of our school staff are absolutely committed to,” said Ms Tierney.
As Scott Donohoe, Principal of Catherine McAuley Catholic College Medowie emphasised to all female students on the day they were addressed by Melinda Tankard Reist, “Every single one of you deserves to feel safe when you come to school, and if you don’t, I’m telling you in my position as Principal, I’m not going to accept that.
“This is about your safety – your psychological safety just as much as your physical safety. We are a school with strong values, and we will lead by those.”
Championing girls into empowered women
How can we help our young people resist harmful messages from media and pop culture and aspire to respectful relationships?
This was the question behind the Diocese’s engagement of renowned author, media commentator and advocate for women, Melinda Tankard Reist.
As I turned up to Catherine McAuley Catholic College to sit in on a session Melinda facilitated with the female students, I didn’t anticipate being shocked.
After all, I’ve worked at the Diocese for a while, I have TikTok (albeit my algorithm is skewed towards home renovations and food recipes), and I grew up in the MSN, flip phone era.
However, listening to Tankard Reist’s insights on the social landscape young people are living in was a stark reminder on how little anyone removed from adolescence really knows.
Highly regarded for her work addressing sexualisation, objectification, harms of pornography and sexual exploitation, Tankard Reist spoke about boys in classrooms sexually moaning, groaning and barking at their female peers as a new trend amongst schools across the country.
She said young men’s exposure and accessibility to pornography is causing sexual violence against young women, in the form of strangulation, physical violence and rape threats.
This isn’t a case of one bad egg, it’s a widespread problem.
Many parents don’t know this could be happening to, or at the hands of, their own child.
And what’s potentially most distressing, is Tankard Reist finds that these adolescent females have already given up hope that their male counterparts will ever treat them differently or change their behaviours.
She says that what she is seeing in schools is violent, unnatural behaviour, with boys making rape threats to girls, sexualising the parents of their classmates and significant increases in peer-on-peer harassment.
“Girls have a right to say no, and that’s what we’re trying to teach them. I want them to clarify their values, to enforce their boundaries, to understand they have a right to be safe. They have a right not to be sexually groaned at, moaned at, threatened with rape,” said Tankard Reist.
“They have a right to come to school and learn and enjoy hanging out with their friends and not be telling me in tears of the routine daily sexual harassment and intrusion that they endure at every school in the country.”
Tankard Reist says this is only one part of the problem; the sexualisation and value that’s placed in presentation instead of personality is another driver of this epidemic.
“It’s so important for parents and carers to stop and think if they’re allowing violent music? Violent video games? Are they allowing their sons to speak inappropriately to their sisters? Are they themselves modelling a respectful relationship?
“It’s not always what we say, it’s what we do, and parents need to act personally, but they also need to act collectively,” she said.
I asked Melinda if she had hope for things getting better.
She took longer to answer this question than she did any of the others.
“Hope… I must have it. I couldn’t get out of bed each day if I didn’t.
“There are very low moments, and right now I’m hearing the worst stories I’ve ever heard in 30 years of public engagement. I’m not going to minimise the pain of that.
“But yes, I do have hope that change is possible. We must keep doing the work.”
Championing boys into good men
It’s early on a brisk winter morning at Catherine McAuley Catholic College in Medowie.
Male students from Years 7 to 11 are filing into the school hall to hear from Daniel Principe, a youth advocate, speaker, and educator who focuses on helping young people navigate the digital world and form healthy relationships.
As a middle-aged male, an employee of the Diocese and most importantly, a father of two sons, I was interested and somewhat nervous to learn about digital literacy and the promotion of positive masculinity and sexual expression.
As the students settle in, I approach Principe to ask about having some time to chat after the session. Given his profile—he was on ‘The Project’ just days prior after all—I was slightly nervous asking. However, Principe immediately makes me feel at ease, saying, “Whatever you need will be fine,” despite his busy morning schedule.
Principe’s easy manner is apparent as he begins his session with the male students. His approach is very knowledgeable but also very fun. He recalls a story about when he went to high school, playing Snake on a Nokia 3310 as one of his first digital experiences. This approach immediately connects him with the students, who can draw parallels to the online ‘gaming’ experience. Unfortunately, however, those digital experiences are much different for teenagers today.
That’s because adolescence in the modern world is tough. Young people today face challenges unlike any other generation, growing up in a digital world of pornography, sexist online content, sexbots, catfishing, and live-streamed violence.
The students now feeling at ease, add to this verbatim, telling Principe how they are being exposed to "jokes" and online content that, at its mildest, features women who supposedly belong in the kitchen, right through to threats about sexual assault and worse.
Principe’s session continues with discussion on the impact of online content on young people. He addresses the challenges posed by the current digital age, such as exposure to harmful content and the pressures of social media and provides practical skills to evaluate and navigate these influences critically. His aim is to empower young people to make more informed decisions and develop a healthier relationship with technology.
Central to his approach is being frank about harmful online behaviours, particularly those related to pornography. He acknowledges its existence while providing the boys with the tools and knowledge to help navigate this complex aspect of modern life.
Principe explains, “Unless we champion boys to challenge their cultural dictates, they won’t have the skills or tools to behave any differently. We need to radically shift the culture so that being upstanders and showing care doesn't come at such a social and emotional toll."
“We need to help young males unpack the messages they receive about masculinity and sex, give them the tools and opportunities to build a healthy identity, and provide inspiring examples of good men and respectful relationships.
“It’s our role to get young people to consider what a healthy man looks like—how he talks, how he acts, and how he makes others feel. “We can’t expect boys to get it right on their own, we have to lead the way.”
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