The figures suggest that the figures vary across Scotland, and there have been fluctuations over the Covid period. But in short, more than 210,000 young people miss one day of school every fortnight. At high school, 40% of pupils miss a day per fortnight.
Young people endured months of only associating on social media and online, but were then expected to adapt to socialising in person and returning to friend groups that might have evolved during lockdown. On top of that, Covid-19 restrictions inflicted another deep layer of uncertainty on our young people. There was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be another lockdown, and all of us were conscious that if we contracted Covid-19 we would be homebound for about two weeks.
And we must establish opportunities to access care. In a recent conversation about young people’s mental health, it was brought to my attention that so often teenagers feel like they must be severely ill before they can access care. For all of us, we carry around these dangers in our pocket and absorb them at least every hour if not every minute. That’s what social media apps on our smartphones do.But, without sharing any secrets, I’m even more horrified when I learn how many hours some of the teenagers I know spend on their phones. I need my phone for work, and will often use it for emails, accounting for some of the time I spend on my phone.
Many of our social media platforms have less to do with networking, and far more to do with performance which is rewarded or punished by likes, retweets or comments.