Samantha: Hi and welcome to the latest episode of the CPSU podcast. I'm Samantha Lawrence and I'm the Senior Digital Content Editor at the CPSU. In this episode, I will be talking to Louisa Street, who we have seen before, in part four. And Louisa is a youth worker with lots of experience working in sexual health services, drug and alcohol abuse services, and her latest projects are all around talking to children and young people around digital resilience and reducing harm.

In the last episode, I spoke to her about the harm reduction principle, which is a way of reducing harm associated with set behaviours rather than focusing on trying to stop the behaviour altogether. By focusing on building digital resilience for children, young people in all sports and all clubs, we can help reduce harm and keep our young users safer online.

Louisa and myself will be discussing four topics, four questions that come about from the sport and physical activity sector. And we'll be looking at how we use that harm reduction principle in a practical sense.

Here we go.

Hi, Louisa. Thank you for joining me today. So, we promised to do a follow up episode where we looked at very specific questions coming from the sport sector and then hopefully discussing how we can use the harm reduction principle to look at these questions.

So, I have four. Does that sound okay?

Louisa: Yeah, that sounds perfect.

Samantha: Brilliant. Okay.

My first one is: we have top athletes that want to promote themselves on social media to help win sponsorship and to maximize their exposure in the sport sector. But this exposure comes with risks. How can we take a harm reduction approach to this?

Louisa: That's a really good question. And I think as with all harm reduction, there's not a simple answer, but I think there are a few rules of thumb that you can apply to this sort of situation.

So, the first thing is we have child labour laws in this country that say, this is how many hours a week people under 18 are allowed to work. And that reflects the fact that they're in school. We want school to be their main priority. We don't want them to be spending all of their time working. I think we can apply a very similar rule to this, like if a young person is using social media, but they're managing to kind of keep on top of schoolwork, keep on top of practice, all of the things that that are expected of them being at that high level and then running their social media account or someone's helping them run it, that's fine.

If it becomes something that like they're having to stay up late every night to like, post, respond to comments. That then becomes more problematic. I think having boundaries around that is really important and encouraging young people to have those boundaries as well. Same with parents. Parents might be very keen to push, because what they're probably seeing is the very small number of young people who are influencers in this area, who are getting sponsorships and stuff.

And they might think, right, well, that's what we have to do for this child if we, you know, if I want my child to be successful, I have to go through all of that and have all of that same exposure. You know, talking to parents about that, talking about other opportunities to engage with brands might be a way to do that.

And that could be talking about when brand ambassadors might be at competitions and events and those kinds of things, so that parents know it's not social media or nothing, but you know that there are going to be other opportunities having a kind of sensible approach to it. It shouldn't be getting in the way of other things. It shouldn't be all encompassing.

It should be something that they can do if they enjoy it.

Samantha: Thank you.

What advice would you give to, say, a 12-year-old, 13-year-old who is just kind of thinking this is the platform for me, and I should be out there. My friends are out there. They're putting themselves out there on social media. This is what I need to be doing. And actually the push is coming from the young person themselves that this is what they want to be doing, but maybe they don't necessarily fully understand yet the repercussions per se, potential financial extortion or potentially if they are in a sport where they are wearing specific clothing, for example, and therefore doing specific poses that they are exposing themselves again to potential risks.

What would you say to that young person?

Louisa: I think there's a really important thing in that about informed consent. A child who is that sort of age that younger teenage or not even 13 years, 12 or 13, that's very young to be posting those sorts of images and they probably don't fully understand the potential repercussions of that.

So, talking a little bit about understanding these images may not be sexual in nature, but, you know, how would you feel if somebody used them in that way. Would that be upsetting to you. Because that is how we get informed consent, is we talk about the potential risks and make sure that young people understand them and then are able to weigh up the pros and cons themselves. If they're able to do that, then they can potentially make that decision.

But again, having that conversation with parents, particularly for younger teenagers, I think parents should be involved in that

Samantha: If we move on to the second question, which is we often take photographs to help promote the club, but many of our participants are wearing minimal clothing, for example, like swimming, gymnastics, athletics, tennis, sometimes, beach volleyball.

How can they use photos to promote the club but keep their participants safe?

Louisa: This is a really interesting question. And there's a kind of dark side to the answer. I'm sort of coming at this as someone who did gymnastics as a child, so I understand that, like when you compete, you have to wear a leotard, and there's a lot of emphasis on being able to see the lines of the body. And that's really important within the sport.

The thing that I would suggest for photographs that are being used to promote the club is that is that important for the promotion. What are you trying to achieve? Because if what you're trying to say is your body has to look this way to be part of the club, that's probably going to be an issue to many new potential participants.

Whereas something that's less revealing, but might reflect the sort of day to day of the club, I think having photos that are more about that practice and this as well as what people wear most of the time, if you are posting about your club, you might find that the images of children in the competition garb that's more engagement than the other.

And the question that you have to ask yourself is, why is that?

Samantha: That's a very good question. Like actually critically looking at why that's more popular.

Louisa: And I think, you know, it's tempting to kind of chase that engagement, but I'd really advise thinking about other ways of doing that.

Samantha: That's really good advice. I never did gymnastics when I was younger. I did dance, and I had a real problem myself, when I was doing competitions or exams. I had to wear makeup, I had to do my hair some way, I had to wear a certain costume. And I remember having a proper panic attack when I was about 13, when our outfit for our team was going to change and the girls wanted to be more sexualized, so they wanted less clothing.

And I had a real problem with that. Actually, it’s one of the reasons why I quit dance, because I was so uncomfortable with it. Every Saturday when I went to dance club, I wore my jazz trousers, my baggy t shirt. And that's what I was comfortable in. And that's the majority of the time. No makeup. My hair was a mess. And that's what dance was to me. But that's not what is necessarily represented. So, I think that was really interesting to kind of look at going, how can you portrayal club for what it actually is. Not necessarily that kind of small percentage of what actually looks like.

Louisa: If you have a club, tracksuit or t shirt or something, having everybody in pictures wearing that.

Samantha: That's good. I mean, I've, managed social media accounts of the businesses previously over the years. And I think one of the things I would always do is look at the photo through a different lens. So, what is it that I might be missing if I just say, oh, that's a really great photo of this. Are there any personal details? Can I track down this person, for example, by looking at where they are, what they're wearing? Have they got a name in the background? You know, things like that as well. So, it wouldn't just necessarily be the sexualized kind of aspect of okay, what position if I managed to get this person in on this still? Because if you are trying to track an action shot of somebody doing a gymnastics floor routine or dance, sometimes you are going to get a photo of them in what could potentially be a precarious position. But that maybe not the image you choose.

Or, you know, some children are given permission to have their photo taken on social media. So, making sure that everybody in it is aware of what they're consenting to and why you're using that photo. Thank you. Next question.

How can you take a harm reduction approach to using instant messaging apps?

Louisa: I think when it's, you know, for a sports club or any kind of professional reason, there should be some sort of ground rules. And I would say that would be only posting about things that are relevant to the club and encouraging parents if they want to just chat, having a support group chat for not promoting other things through the group chat unless it's really relevant.

It will take a little while, but gradually people will sort of fall in line with those rules as they recognize that we're going to be policed on this. It's not just going to be a free for all. And that way if there's then any inappropriate messaging, you can kind of deal with it because you've set those ground rules. In terms of young people, I think even more so, there needs to be really clear rules and those rules need to be enforced.

Samantha: So, the fourth question we've got is if the young person comes to us and discloses that they've been bullied online by members of our club or even outside of the club, how should we respond to this?

Louisa: One of the things that's really important about this is that you will probably only find out that a young person is being bullied if they disclose to you. And I would say, again, deal with it in exactly the same way as you would if it was happening in front of you or in, in like changing rooms or other spaces where you might not physically be.

But if you knew there was bullying happening, you would deal with it. That would kind of involve talking to both parties, asking the child that's being bullied, what do you want to do about this? How would you like us to support you? So, I think talking to the child that's being bullied is an important first step.

And if they say they don't want you to talk to the bully, then talking to the whole club about the importance of respecting each other and being kind to each other and just, you know, not necessarily singling anyone out. And it doesn't have to be a big deal. It can be. Before we start today, guys, I just want to remind everybody about how important it is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We're very aware at the moment of like the language that young people use online is somewhat difficult for adults to understand and, emojis and things can be difficult for adults to understand, but that isn't unique to the online space. The best thing we can do is provide a safe space for that young person to come and tell us that it's happening.

And that might be by saying to young people in your club, if you need to talk about anything, come and talk to one of us. We're here. Like you can talk to us after practice, or you can come in early, or you can drop us a message, and we can arrange a time to have a catch up about stuff, because I think that means a lot more to young people to know that they'll be listened to.

Then then kind of trying to decipher everything that they're saying and have a deep understanding of all of the youth language.

Samantha: I was just thinking specifically around the kind of high-performance sport, for example, competitive sport. There are cases where clubs have to take young children, young people abroad, and the parents are at home. So, the children are more under the duty of care of a club. Or maybe they are also away from their normal support network. Maybe they feel a little bit more isolated and vulnerable to any type of bullying online or offline.

Louisa: Yeah. I mean, I guess making use of the good side of technology and saying if you need time to FaceTime your parents or your best mate and, and just have a chat with someone who's going to make you feel good about yourself, like, you know, making sure that actually if that child seems to be struggling, can technology be used to help that?

Samantha: I think that's been really very useful. And what I kind of want to bring us back to is that, on the previous podcast episode, we spoke about having children and, you know, people as the agents for change within that harm reduction principle. But it is children and young people who advocate for and they know some of the great benefits, like you've just said, the benefits of having it, and they have been brought up with it, and they don't know a world without it.

So, aren't they almost the best people to maybe ask some questions around this? Like how would you deal with it? What do you think we should do and help them help the club, help the activity, provider work out what their online policy maybe should be, what their expectations should be, and maybe how they should best deal with it.

Would that be a good idea?

Louisa: Definitely. And it's interesting because I feel like maybe ten years ago, if you said to young people, we're going to do a group agreement, everybody knew what that meant. And recently I've been doing it with young people and they're like, no, I've never heard of that before now.

And I think it's nice to kind of say, like, we're not throwing all of the existing rules out of the window. They still all apply. This is just what else you think is important to make you feel safe in this space. Article 12 on the UN convention on the rights for child is the right to have a voice.

And yeah, asking them, what do you want to do? What do you want. What do you think is important and how can we help you stay safe online when you're interacting with stuff related to this sport? I think that's a really nice way to go about it.

Samantha: Thank you so much for your time today. And good luck with your PhD.

Conclusion

Thank you for listening to this Child Protection in Sport Unit podcast. If you’re looking for more information and resources on safeguarding children in sport, please visit our website at thecpsu.org.uk.