The Digital Conversation: Children in Scotland publishes first themed issue of its member magazine

Issue 10 of Children in Scotland Magazine delves into the digital world and the delicate balance our sector must strike: helping children and young people to make the most of opportunities, while also protecting them from risks.

Across in-depth interviews, features and analysis, we hear how children and young people, and the adults that support them, are finding their footing in both their offline and online lives covering issues including phone-free learning, online bullying, digital wellbeing and the reading for pleasure crisis. Here’s a look at this issue:

Arts focus: Drake Music Scotland

Since 2023, Drake Music Scotland’s Digital Orchestra Youth programme has been bridging the gap between school age and adult provision for musicians with additional support needs. Now spanning four regional groups, Emma Lines tells us how creativity and music making is often a place where disabled young people flourish and how the orchestras can offer ambition, confidence, pride and stability to young lives undergoing transition.

Interviews: Phone-free learning

Described as a “breath of fresh air” by one headteacher and welcomed by parents, phone-free learning is reshaping school life in two secondary schools – the first in Scotland to pilot a zero-phone policy. Just over one year after the pilot began, headteachers Craig Downie of Queensferry High School and Neil McCallumof James Gillespie’s High School reflect on how the policy is working in practice, and what it means for pupils, staff and parents.

Resource focus

Paddy Crump is a Digital Rebel and Campaigns Director at FlippGen, a youth-led organisation tackling digital wellbeing and online safety through lived experience. He explains how a new Digital Intelligenz toolkit shows that, far from being a “zombie generation”, GenZ have the knowledge, passion and ambition to help those growing up behind them not just survive a digital world, but thrive in it.

Digital equality

Dr Jeanette D’Arcy of the University of Liverpool explains how, in an environment which makes less and less distinction between online and ‘IRL’, questions of internet access are increasingly vital to the development, health and wellbeing of Scotland’s children and young people.

Published today, the magazine has been inspired by Children in Scotland’s The Digital Conversation, which brings together the voices, views and experiences of our sector to find ways forward in the rapidly-changing digital landscape.

Editor of Children in Scotland Magazine, Angus Doyle said:

As many of the contributors to this edition make plain, digital is a fact and a very significant part of most young lives.

While elements of this shifting reality can feel overwhelming, there is no use sticking our fingers in our ears and whistling some analog tune. We must find our footing and make the most of the situation, combating the well-publicised risks of an online world, but also making the most of the many opportunities that it offers to us and the young people we work for.

This is what Children in Scotland’s The Digital Conversation is all about.

Providing a space to share knowledge and best practice, print and digital editions of Children in Scotland Magazine are published twice a year, with all members receiving a free copy.

Click here to find out more about joining us in membership.

Non-members can subscribe to the Magazine for just £20 per year, gaining access to two issues – click here to find out more about subscribing.