In this blog, Maryam from the Childnet Youth Advisory Board looks at the Board’s second call, and their plan for the future.
Harmful sexual behaviour was the topic of the July call with the Childnet Youth Advisory Board (YAB), which is an incredibly relevant issue.
I believe it is particularly important to hear directly from young people about issues like this because teenagers and children’s thought processes and behaviours are more malleable as the brain finishes developing and maturing. Therefore, harmful sexual behaviours being so frequent can have a major toll, specifically on young people. Things such as pornography, body shaming, and rating peers will have a larger impact on a younger demographic since it warps their views of people and sex because their opinions are still being developed. I think that discussing this topic with the Youth Advisory Board to get young people’s views helps Childnet become more knowledgeable on the topic and will help them create a greater awareness of the topic to keep children and young people safe.
Childnet set the board some independent tasks to work on before the next call which included completing a survey and getting some ideas together for a ‘YAB’ toolkit. The survey had interesting and thought provoking questions such as ‘Do you think young people’s experiences and understanding of online harmful sexual behaviour change as they get older? If so, how?’ Which I replied with ‘Yes’, because individuals undergo change, people mature with time, and as people age, they may feel more empowered and confident to bring up the subject in conversation, and it becomes less taboo.
Another interesting question posed was, ‘Why do you think some behaviours occur more frequently than others?’, I responded that I believe that some harmful behaviours are committed more frequently because they are simply easier to get away with online.
We also had an extra call to discuss assemblies for Safer Internet Day 2024. We talked about what makes a good assembly from our experiences in school and discussed some ideas of things to include.
