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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

 Tagged with mental health


17 December 2021

Foreword by Dame Rachel de Souza DBE

Since March 2020, thousands of young women have been sharing their experiences of sexual harassment through the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ project. This is an online platform where girls ‑ who are still mostly in school – have described growing up in a world where harassment, including sexualised comments, slut‑shaming and the sharing of nude pictures, is part of their everyday lives. This harmful behaviour happens online and offline. I’ve seen this first‑hand during my time as a headteacher and I know how stressful and damaging it can be for children, especially girls.

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15 December 2021

Eilish particularly criticised the way pornography can depict women's bodies and sexual experiences.

"I didn't understand why that was a bad thing - I thought it was how you learned how to have sex," Eilish said about watching, adding her mother was "horrified" when she told her.

"I was an advocate and I thought I was one of the guys and would talk about it and think I was really cool for not having a problem with it and not seeing why it was bad."

The singer-songwriter said she believed viewing the content while so young had "destroyed" her brain and caused her to suffer nightmares.

Eilish said it is a "real problem" that porn could skewer wider understandings of what is normal during sex, including around consent.

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05 August 2021

With 15m people in England alone living with a long-term condition, and numbers rising, it’s no surprise the chronically ill community has exploded online in the last few years. Celebrities like Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez and Lena Dunham are opening up about their conditions, and chronic illness influencers are attracting huge social media followings.

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02 July 2021

ITV has condemned death threats sent to Love Island contestant Chloe Burrows, calling them "wholly unacceptable".

On Wednesday night's show, Burrows chose to recouple with Aaron Francis, leaving Shannon Singh single.

The move resulted in Shannon departing the dating programme, causing people to send threats to Burrows online, with some encouraging her to kill herself.

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03 June 2021

It’s Pride Month in the UK, which marks the celebration of and focus on LGBTQ+ communities. While this is a time to celebrate, it is also an important time to shed light on the difficult everyday situations many LGBTQ+ young people find themselves in, especially during the ongoing pandemic. Understanding the context of the lives of young LGBTQ+ people and the lived experience of children and young people in our care means we can better understand and support them.

The ‘Queerantine study’ by UCL and University of Sussex found that more than two thirds of LGBTQ+ people showed significant symptoms of depression during lockdown.

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