More than 2,000km away, teens in Sydney lead very different, far more connected lives. But they share similar worries.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bit insulting that they think we can’t handle it,” says 14-year-old Jacinta Hickey who attends Rosebank College in Sydney’s inner west. “I’m definitely mature enough to distinguish right from wrong and to know what’s good and bad for me.”<\/p>\n
Her teachers though couldn’t be happier. “I feel really passionate that as long as we can, we should preserve the innocence that comes through childhood,” says Iris Nastasi, the principal at Rosebank.<\/p>\n
When smartphones started becoming popular in the early 2000s, she thought it would be an opportunity to teach children about technology. She embraced the change. Twenty years later, Ms Nastasi thinks very differently.<\/p>\n
“It’s two in the morning, he or she does something that they wouldn’t normally do and the fallout happens here. Relationships are damaged and we have to look into it.”<\/p>\n
At 12, Lola Farrugia isn’t on social media yet – and with the new law, she now won’t be for another four years. But that doesn’t faze her. She’s happy enough with a flip phone.<\/p>\n
“They’re my school friends so I see them at school, I see them in sport – they’re everywhere,” says Lola, who’s had coaching from her parents about the ills of social media.<\/p>\n
“My mom explained to me that social media is junk food for the brain,” she says. <\/p>\n
“If you have a pantry and you clear [it], you’re not craving anything, you know what I mean?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 2,000km away, teens in Sydney lead very different, far more connected lives. But they share similar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-308359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}