What’s Happening for Young People, and How Schools and Families Can Work Together
Young people are growing up in a digital environment that is reshaping attention, sleep, emotional regulation, social life and learning. The issue is no longer whether screens matter. The issue is whether adults fully understand how digital life is interacting with the developing brain, what it may be displacing in daily life, and what schools and families need to do to respond in more informed ways. Research with Australian children and adolescents points to rising screen-based activity, high rates of device use, and clear differences between healthier and more harmful patterns of engagement online.
This webinar is not about being for technology or against technology. It is about making its use more informed. Digital tools are part of young people’s lives, learning and relationships. But the evidence also shows that heavy or poorly regulated use can affect several of the conditions young people rely on to stay well and stay engaged: sleep, attention, emotional regulation, social functioning and recovery time. The type of use matters too. More passive use, such as prolonged scrolling and consuming content without meaningful interaction, is associated with poorer mental health outcomes than more active or socially connected use.
That is why this conversation needs to go beyond simple messages about “screen time.” The more useful questions are harder and more practical. What is digital use doing to sleep and concentration? What is it doing to emotional regulation and impulse control? What is it replacing in a young person’s day? When does online conflict start affecting school belonging, peer relationships and classroom functioning? And what education do schools and families need so they can respond with clarity rather than fear, confusion or hindsight? These are the questions this session is designed to address.
Hosted by Gemma McLean, and featuring Karen Roberston, Nikki Bonus and Dr Mark Williams this webinar will take a deeper look at the issues young people are facing in a high-stimulation, high-pressure digital world. A central part of the session will be a deep dive into the neuroscience led by Dr Mark Williams, exploring what current evidence suggests about screens and the developing brain, why attention, sleep, regulation and social functioning matter so much, and what adults need to understand if they want to reduce harm and support healthier development.
This is not a webinar about blame.
It is a webinar about curiosity, insight and action: what young people are facing, what may be changing, and how schools and families can work together in ways that genuinely make a difference.
The evidence is showing that the problem is not simply that young people are online more often. It is that digital load can begin to alter the conditions needed for healthy development and learning. When sleep is disrupted, attention is fragmented, emotional recovery is reduced, and online conflict is constant, the effects can show up in irritability, withdrawal, friendship strain, reactivity, reduced concentration, lower resilience and disengagement from school. Cyberbullying is part of that picture, but it is not the whole picture. Online life can also amplify social comparison, social pressure and exposure to conflict in ways that follow young people directly into classrooms and homes. Recent Australian reporting shows cyberbullying complaints have risen sharply, especially among students entering secondary school, and these issues are closely connected to what is happening in peer groups at school.
This is why schools cannot address the issue on their own, and families cannot either. Young people need adults around them to understand what is changing, what warning signs to look for, what boundaries and habits are worth strengthening, and what helps protect sleep, attention, connection and regulation. The response needs to be more joined up, more informed and more practical. It needs to help adults distinguish between digital use that supports learning and connection, and digital use that is beginning to undermine wellbeing, relationships and functioning. Resources developed for schools and families are increasingly moving in this direction: not anti-technology, but focused on healthy habits, critical use and earlier intervention when harm is building.
This session is for school leaders, educators, wellbeing teams and families who want a clearer, evidence-informed understanding of what young people are facing, what the science is pointing to, and what actions are most likely to help.
Because when adults understand more about what digital life is doing to attention, regulation, relationships and learning, they are in a much stronger position to respond earlier, work together better, and make technology use more informed, more balanced and more supportive of healthy development.
Nikki Bonus is an Australian founder, educator, keynote speaker and education technology innovator who has spent more than two decades working inside Australian schools to ensure every child is seen, safe, heard, connected and capable — regardless of background, identity, postcode or circumstance.
She is the Founder and CEO of Life Skills GO, an Australian-built, AI-powered early identification, engagement, learning and school improvement platform. Life Skills GO gives schools and the support networks around them real-time visibility of what may be preventing students from attending, participating, belonging and learning — automatically surfacing the right evidence to the right person at the right time, without adding to educator workload.
The platform's purpose is clear: to connect information, reduce unnecessary burden on schools, and equip educators and decision-makers with the evidence they need to act earlier. Because earlier action changes outcomes. Belonging drives engagement. Engagement drives attendance. Attendance drives attainment.
Life Skills GO was not designed from the outside. It was built from the ground up over nine years, co-designed in direct partnership with more than 1,000 Australian schools — shaped by students, teachers, school leaders, wellbeing teams, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, child development experts, learning support staff, families and carers. This multidisciplinary foundation — spanning data analysis, education design, cognitive neuroscience, child development and research evaluation — ensures the platform is grounded in evidence, tested in practice and built to generate insights that are meaningful at the classroom, school and system level.
Nikki came to this work not as a technologist, but as a practitioner. For 15 years before founding Life Skills GO, she worked directly inside schools delivering social-emotional learning programs. The problem Life Skills GO was built to solve was not identified from a distance — it was surfaced from within. Students needed a structured, safe way to communicate what they were experiencing. Teachers needed real-time visibility of patterns forming beneath the surface. Wellbeing teams needed earlier signals before situations escalated to crisis. Leaders needed whole-school trend data to inform resourcing, planning and improvement. Families needed a clearer picture of their child — not just academic results or behaviour incidents.
At scale, Life Skills GO gives schools the infrastructure to see what is unfolding in a student's world before it becomes a crisis — to understand why it may be happening, and to know what to do next. It enables evidence to inform not only individual support, but whole-school improvement and the broader network of people working around every child.
The platform was built with more than 1,000 Australian schools across government, Catholic, independent, specialist and hospital settings. Its 15 million student check-in responses represent one of the largest real-time evidence bases on student wellbeing ever assembled in this country — with state-by-state data published openly by jurisdiction.
Nikki's conviction has not changed since the beginning: no child should fall through the cracks because of the circumstances they were born into. Every child can thrive when they are met with the right environment, the right skills, the right support and the right tools at the right time. Life Skills GO exists to make that possible — consistently, equitably and at scale.
Karen Robertson is CEO of Life Ed Australia and Vice President of the Australian Parents Council, with more than three decades of experience in education leadership, policy and program innovation. She is a recognised voice in children’s health, wellbeing and digital safety, contributing to national policy discussions, Senate inquiries and global education networks. Karen is passionate about translating evidence into action and building partnerships that create meaningful, lasting impact for children and young people.
Mark is an internationally recognised neuroscience professor with over 25 years’ experience conducting behavioural and brain imaging research focusing on our social skills and how we learn. He has received numerous awards for teaching and research, taught the fundamentals of neuroscience to everyone from kindy kids to adults, published more than 70 scientific articles, and worked at MIT (USA) and multiple universities in Australia. Mark draws on his extensive scientific background to work with schools and organisations to develop evidence-based practices using neuroscience to improve learning, productivity, innovation and mental health. Mark’s new book “The Connected Species” is a #1 Best Seller and his work has been highlighted in the media including, The New York Times, Forbes, The Economist, and New Scientist.
© 2025 LIFE SKILLS GROUP.