Wednesday 21 January
Davos, Switzerland
The new child and youth mental health report sheds light on the scale of our global knowledge gaps on the correlation between childhood technology use and childhood mental health impacts.
Over the past decade, mental health conditions in children and adolescents have seen a significant rise across all countries and incomes. The World Health Organization, estimates one in seven 10-19 year olds worldwide experience a mental disorder, and that a third of conditions emerge by age 14.
“It’s astonishing that we’re not doing more to understand this issue,” says Marija Manojlovic, Executive Director of Safe Online, who released the new findings at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.
“We know that children’s technology use is increasing, and we’re past the point of no return. Technology is embedded into almost everything we do. But we don’t really know what the long-term impacts are for children and adolescents. Most research on the topic is speculative.
“Most shockingly – there are huge gaps in research on the impact for under-5s when we know children as young as 2 are using phones and tablets. At a time when governments, like the UK, are developing screentime guidelines for pre-schoolers and parents are seeking guidance on technology use – we must have better evidence to help navigate these critical issues.
“We know that mental health conditions for under-18s have been rising for a decade but we don’t have the longitudinal research to understand the relationship with digital technologies in depth. This is a particular area of interest for me,” says Marija Manojlovic.
Editor’s notes:
The Ecosystem Landscape Child & Adolescent Mental Health and Digital Technology report can be found here: https://safeonline.global/weave-wellbeing/
Marija has a strong track record of raising funds for research and developing tools to help prevent thorny issues like these. As Executive Director, she has led Safe Online to raise and deploy over US$100m over the past 10 years for research and tools to prevent online child sexual abuse and exploitation, and she’s on track to do it again, this time with child mental health in mind.
Safe Online is launching Weave Wellbeing, a pioneering fund to mobilize the scale of financing needed to tackle this urgent issue. Marija has already secured US$2m seed funding from Iconiq Impact.
Media contacts:
To organise a quote at Davos please send Marija Manojlovic a WhatsApp message on +41794502500
For further information on the report please contact: Natalie Shoup, Industry and Data Lead, Safe Online, natalie@safeonline.global
To organise interviews or commentary on child mental health and technology please contact Penny Arrowsmith, Communications Manager, penny@strategicagenda.com or +447467780287
Our grantees University of Kent Understanding and improving help seeking by people at risk of online child sexual exploitation and abuse Countries involved:United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland The Centre of Research and Education in Forensic Psychology at the University of Kent is a group of leading psychologists working
Safe Online awards $6.7 million to 20 new grantees to advance innovative and high-impact solutions to fight online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA).
In response to the escalating risks children face in the digital world, Safe Online launched a global call for proposals in 2024 to identify and support the most promising solutions
Our grantees Project VIC international Katalyst Countries involved:October 2017 – October 2019 Project VIC International will continue developing its KATALYST programme, which aims to boost countries’ technological and investigative capacity to combat online crimes against children. By working with local law enforcement, KATALYST will improve forensic and victim identification capabilities, and facilitate collaboration between
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Weave Wellbeing is Safe Online’s initiative to raise a USD $100 million collaborative fund for children and adolescent mental health and safety in a digital age.
We are here to ensure every child and young person grows in to the digital world feeling safe, and is protected from harm.
We support, champion, and invest in innovative partners from the public, private, and third sectors working towards the same objective.
We believe in equipping guardians and young people with the skills to understand and see danger themselves once accessing digital experiences without supervision.
