Welcome to the Headstart Online Resilience Podcasts

Our podcast provides a deeper dive into issues around young people’s digital resilience and is for anyone who supports young people. Youth worker Louisa Street talks to Professor Andy Phippen (Bournemouth University) about the issues young people face online, from harassment to pornography, from managing your digital footprint to dealing with trolls. We focus on building resilience in young people, rather than a simple ‘online safety’ approach.

We give supportive advice on discussing the digital world with young people, to help them have the best possible experience of it. To do this we take a harm reduction approach. This means we accept that the online world is here to stay and we need to support young people to recognise digital risks and manage those risks - whether that be through talking to an adult about things they see that worry them, or learning how to curate their online experience to ensure they’re seeing what they want to and not being slaves to ‘the algorithm’. Most of all, we want you to feel confident to address digital issues - and we know it can be daunting! There are always new apps, games and activities which can make it feel like an uphill battle. However, we know that as adults we have the skills to recognise and manage the risks that young people experience, and we just need to learn how to apply these skills to the digital world - and don’t worry, that doesn’t involve knowing every new trend that appears!

We refer to the Digital Resilience Tool and the Digital Resilience Training throughout the podcast. You can access the tool at Headstart Digital Resilience Tool, and the training at Headstart Digital Resilience Training.

So, if you work with young people, whether you’re a teacher, social worker, school nurse, youth worker, TA, foster carer or anything else then give us a listen.

The podcasts are ad free and are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and the majority of podcast apps - just search ‘Online Resilience’. Or you can listen to our most recent episode below.

If you have any questions / comments please feel free to contact:

Louisa Street - louisa.street@packshare.org

Professor Andy Phippen - aphippen1@bournemouth.ac.uk