It's a world-first online project, run out of west-Auckland.

"Reaching out for help in a moment of crisis can be hard, " says Andrew Sutherland.

Sutherland is the manager of Live for Tomorrow, a project of Zeal.

He says that to assume young people will do this when they need help is not a good fit for how our brains work at that age.

"At the same time, there's a constant stream of young people expressing this crisis online."

Live For Tomorrow, along with a team of more than 30 volunteers, takes help to those young people.

They respond in real-time and on the young person's terms, chatting through social media platforms.

They call this Online Crisis Intervention.

The programme uses algorithms to search for certain hashtags, like #depressed or #suicidal, which help locate young people in distress.

Its current focus is on Instagram.

"That's based off our research that shows that's where there's a concentration of this content being posted by young people," says Elliot Taylor, executive director of Online Crisis Intervention.

"These are young people wherever they are in the world… they're struggling, they're in pain and they're using this medium that is familiar to them, to be able to talk about that."

Taylor says there have many instances where the programme has saved lives.

In March, Online Crisis Intervention project won the ICT-enabled community programme award for leadership in harnessing technology for social good.

Vodafone NZ Foundation has given Zeal its largest charitable grant: $700,000

Where to get help:

• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (24/7), Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7), text free to 234 (8am-midnight) or web chat (10am-10pm)
• Kidsline: 0800 54 37 54 (24/7; Kidsline Buddies available 4pm-9pm)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 TAUTOKO / 0508 828 865 (24/7)
• What's Up: 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 942 8787 (1pm-10pm weekdays, 3pm-10pm weekends) or live chat (3pm-10pm)
• Healthline: 0800 611 116 (24/7)
• Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)
• Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 or text free to 4202 (24/7)
• If you feel you or someone you know is at immediate risk, call 111.

Source

• zeal.nz
• zeal..nz
• newsroom.co.nz
• Image: zeal.nz

A report from UK think-tank Education Policy Institute (EPI) states that children in the UK have a higher rate of extreme usage (37.8 percent of all UK 15 year olds) than other countries.

Only Chile reported more.

The think-tank examined the relation between social media use (including online time) and mental illness:

While twelve percent of children who spend no time on social networking websites on a normal school day have symptoms of mental ill health, that figure rises to 27 percent for those who are on the sites for three or more hours a day.

There's no clear indication as to whether the extra time online was a catalyst for mental health issues, or if it was the other way around.

The majority of children, whether extreme users or not, reported anxiety whenever there wasn't an internet connection.

Nevertheless, these are indicators of association and do not necessarily prove that social media causes harm to young people's well-being.

For example, it could be that someone already experiencing a mental health problem is more likely to use social media, or that there are other relevant factors.

Extreme internet users are far more likely to be bullied as well; 18-percent reported they'd had negative things spread about them versus only 7-percent of those who reported being online three hours or less during school days.

The study also cautioned against simply restricting a child's access, claiming that this could actually hurt kids in the long run by preventing them from learning the skills they needed to cope with stressful events online.

Instead, parents and schools should be more concerned with teaching children to cope. The researchers even ask Parliament to get involved:

The role of government should be to work with the industry, schools and families to help improve young people's emotional well-being and resilience and to ensure children are taught and supported to learn digital skills as they start to navigate social media for the first time. Continue reading

Sources

• The Next Web article by Tristan Greene
• Image: PsychCentral