Practices

When someone says they did not really mean it, that it was not really them, the temptation is to hear an excuse. It is usually better information than that.

Take the disowning seriously and ask what state it came out of. What time was it, how long had they been online, what had happened that day, had they…

Things posted in ten seconds have got young people excluded from school, and worse. It is worth asking about online conduct in the same routine way you would ask about anything else that could go badly.

Ask what has been posted, what has been sent, what someone would not want read out. Not as an inspection and not as a lecture about permanence, but…

A whole evening can go into recording an evening. It is worth asking, with no scolding in it, whether you were there for the thing you now have a photograph of.

This lands better than a rule about hours, because it is about something you would miss rather than something you are doing wrong. Try leaving the…

Among teenagers, saying they want to die has become something you say when the bus is late. You can no longer read intent off the phrase, in either direction.

So the words neither prove there is danger nor prove there is not. What tells you is everything the words leave out: whether there is a plan, whether…

When a death is filmed and passed around, some of the people who watch it are not all right afterwards, and a few are put in real danger by it. Ask what has been going round.

The question is simple enough. Has anything about someone dying gone round your school or your feed lately, and did you see it. Then ask how it left…