Cyber-resilience (Young People)

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 6 February 2018.

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Photo of Ruth Maguire Ruth Maguire Scottish National Party

I thank Gillian Martin for bringing this important topic to the chamber and for all the work that she is doing on it.

I am sure that Gillian Martin will not mind me saying that, for people of our generation, who grew up in a world that is very different from the one that our young folk inhabit, the sheer scale of this topic can be quite overwhelming. It affects every constituency in every part of Scotland. It affects young people of both sexes and of all sexual orientations and spans several age groups, from those who are barely teenagers to young adults. It affects people of all classes and all backgrounds, regardless of their other interests and aspirations. Although the immediate impact is on young people, it affects all of us, too, because we all have young people in our lives whom we care about and want the best for.

For current generations of young people, for whom the divide between the real world and the online world is increasingly blurred, I guess that it is only to be expected that aspects of their romantic lives take place in the digital world, too. We are not going to be able to change that. Teenagers have always fallen in love with and wanted to have sex with one another and they will continue to do so. In a healthy and respectful context, fair play to them—it is part of growing up. However, although we cannot and do not want to stop hormones raging and romances blossoming, we can and must raise young people’s awareness of the new dangers and risks that go along with that in a digital age. We will never be able to protect our young people from unrequited love or a broken heart, but we can do our best to protect them from the mental anguish of seeing intimate images of themselves appear in public or ending up with sexual offences charges on their record.

A big part of that is about understanding how teenagers’ brains work and the pressures that they are under. Recent research into the teenage brain has shown that there is heightened risk taking during adolescence; and, at the same time, the influence of peer pressure peaks. That is quite a combination, and thinking about it can help us to understand why our young people sometimes take risks that most of us would find utterly terrifying and would never think of taking.

The example that Professor Sarah-Jane Blakemore gives in her TED talk on the subject—which I recommend to anyone who is interested—is of an intelligent 13-year-old girl who knows all about the health risks of smoking but who, if she is out at the weekend and her friends offer her a cigarette, is very likely to smoke it. As neuroscience shows us, for a teenager, the risk of being ostracised from their peer group completely outweighs any of the health risks that they would think about from smoking.

In the context of viewing, sexting and sharing intimate images, it helps to understand the pressures that our young people are dealing with. If they are seen as something that everyone else is doing and if they are presented as a normal part of a relationship and as validating, the pressure on young people must be immense. When, at the same time, the area of the brain that is associated with self-regulation and judgment is still developing, teenagers are prone to taking risks.

It seems to me that our emphasising the career consequences, legal implications, potential for bullying and mental health repercussions is not going to be good enough. It will not do what we want it to do—in fact, I am quite sure of that.

As my time is ending and I do not want to overrun, I will just echo Gillian Martin’s sentiment that we should work with young people themselves and really listen to what they tell us will help to keep them safe, well and happy.