Developing a journaling intervention to address harmful use of online content in children and young people

The online environment can have both a harmful and protective effect on the mental health of children and young people. Finding content about disordered eating, self-harm and suicidal behaviour may have negative consequences on a young person. However, being able to connect with others, look for help or distraction, and practice self-care could have a beneficial effect on their wellbeing.

Healthcare professionals working with children and young people want to empower and support them in being safe online through relevant interventions. However, existing interventions are either large scale (e.g. digital literacy) or focus on content-regulation rather than the behaviour of individual users.

Our previous research has shown that completing a research diary about online engagement with self-harm content could be used as a tool to allow young people to reflect on their online engagement and in turn help them to start changing their behaviour.

Project aims

We are partnering with Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) to develop a two-phase study aimed at:

• Collaborating with children and young people with mental health problems and mental health practitioners who support them to develop an app-based journaling intervention addressing problematic engagement with online content
• Piloting our co-developed journaling intervention with school nurses and secondary school pupils with mental health needs, exploring its acceptability, implementation and impact

During this project, we will work collaboratively with two stakeholder groups:

• Children and young people with lived experience of mental health difficulties
• Mental health practitioners who support children and young people

What we hope to achieve

This project will enable us to co-create a digital safety intervention for children and young people aimed at improving problematic online use related to mental health difficulties.

Piloting our intervention with a small number of students and school nurses will help us refine it and apply to test it in clinical services.