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CONTACT US Word from the Head – 28 November 2025
Dear Parents,
I start this week with humbled awe and enormous gratitude to the cast, crew and production team of Hadestown. Miss Hill, Director, Mr Boxall, Musical Director, and the team created an extraordinary production which thrilled and delighted a packed Arundel Centre for 5 performances this week. A demanding and exciting show held us rapt and the quality of the singing, dancing and acting certainly rivals anything we might see in the West End. The cast were remarkable, injecting real character into their roles and fully inhabiting the stage. I was particularly thrilled that both the technical team and the band, both of whom were faultless in their execution, were more or less entirely made up of students. The opportunity to take part in such a large-scale production, in whatever capacity, is an experience that none of them will forget – and my thanks to all of them for creating something that will live long in our memories too.
Huge congratulations to Miss Hill and Mr Boxall for their fearless leadership and inspiration, and also to: Mrs Maliphant-Gray for her extraordinarily inventive design concept for set and costumes, which lent such impact to the production; to Rachel Angus, talented choreographer, for her complex and challenging routines which were so effective in highlighting the mood and themes of the show; to production manager Mr Maliphant-Gray for overseeing all the practical and logistical aspects of everything involved, from the first design principles and rehearsals to the final performance; to Miss Bacon and Miss Gordon for their vocal coaching which had such great effect; and to Miss Vince, Ms MacHugh and the rest of the staff for all their hard work and support. You should all be extremely proud of what you and the girls achieved, and I hope you enjoy a well-deserved rest this weekend!
Last week I promised that this week’s Word from the Head would be dedicated to exploring the keynote talk given by Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, author of Smartphone Nation: Why we’re all addicted to screens and what we can do about it, at the Girls’ Schools Association Annual Conference last week. Dr Regehr’s research, part of which was conducted at Channing back in 2024 with our Digital Leaders, led to the book and she gave us a fascinating insight into her thinking.
Her opening premise is that we benefit from consumer protection and regulation everywhere but the digital world. As a result hate, harm and disinformation proliferate in this space. As she put it, we are not the consumers here, we are the product: “our time and attention is what they are after”. Economist Herbert Simon coined the phrase ‘attention economy’ back in 1971 to describe the idea that human attention is treated by companies as a scarce, valuable commodity that is competed for and monetised.
She went on to debunk the idea of ‘screen time’, a short-hand phrase for measuring device use which has been widely popularised. She pointed out that this idea was originally devised 15 years ago as part of a piece of obesity and diabetes research. The researchers’ conclusion was that it is better to be active than sitting in front of a screen: true enough, of course, but this focuses only on the quantity of screen time, not the quality.
Dr Regehr made clear that our understanding is now much more nuanced. We know that a girl watching TV with her parents, co-viewing or interacting together in the living room, is not the same as a lone girl in her bedroom with headphones on, scrolling the algorithm on her phone without guidance – yet both are ‘screen time’.
Researchers trying to unpick the idea of screen time developed the content pyramid (see photo). This differentiates between types of use, but still doesn’t unpick enough about the impact of each type of use. This is where Dr Regehr’s research, and her development of the concept of ‘digital nutrition’, comes in. Her practical tips were so good I had to share a summary of them here, although I really do encourage you to buy the book and read them in full.
For parents of primary age children, she had three key recommendations:
Look for regulated spaces
Time off screens is generally better than on for younger children. However, live TV on platforms like BBC Kids can provide a diversity of content which has been deliberately curated by a children’s programmer. The Pew Research Centre has found that fully 89% of parents of children aged 5 to 11 say their child watches videos on YouTube, as do 81% of those who have a child aged 3 or 4. A constant diet of unregulated programming, pushed to children by the algorithm, does not give them the intellectual stimulation that a varied and curated programme of live television content will do.
Bigger is better
Prioritise good quality content in communal spaces (big screens) over individual viewing in bedrooms (small screens). The American Pediatrics Association recommends that it’s better to opt for collective or co-viewing over solitary viewing, which can act as a springboard for improved social engagement skills. Her recommendation is to move away from personal devices and back to screens as household appliances. The social nature of co-viewing means that the conversation between the people watching is often as interesting and valuable as what you are watching!
Talk about what you see
Seed the idea from an early age that if kids see things on screens that make them feel bad (or funny in their tummy), you are here to talk. Break open the idea that screen consumption is private. Share what you see, and how you feel about it, regularly to build trust.
For older children, and indeed also for adults, she proposed:
Audit safety awareness
Dr Regehr suggests a walkthrough methodology with children (and our partners): literally, to walk through what comes up on our most-used social media platforms and to talk about it. Questions might include, ‘What do you enjoy about watching this content?’ and ‘Why do you think you’re being pushed this content?’.
An alternative to this is to ask your child or partner to find three pieces of content to discuss with you: something they liked, something they didn’t like and something that made them question something. Be prepared to do the same and share yours back.
Have a digital spring clean
This should be a frequent and enjoyable activity: delete all the apps you don’t use, and then go on an unfollowing spree on the social media you want to keep!
Develop empowered control over technology
Dr Regehr described how it is possible to game the algorithm or, in her words, to “practise algorithmic resistance”. It’s really simple:
- decide what you want to see
- search for it
- scroll fast past the other stuff
- do not report it, that counts as engagement
This is something that we’re going to explore more here at Channing in the New Year.
Finally she had some important messages for us to consider as parents:
Sharenting
Parents regularly share their children online on their own social media feeds: on average, around 1300 images of a child will have been shared by their parents by the time they hit the age of 13. She highlighted the dangers of the ‘first day at school’ photo – publicly displaying a child’s face with their house number and school uniform for easy identification. This has implications for our children’s future data safety. Indeed, Barclays estimates that by 2030 most ID theft will be from children, whose birthday, street they grew up on and first pet’s name (all key security questions) will be freely available on their parents’ social media accounts.
She recommends that parents ensure they have a private account, shared only with close friends and family. Think about identifiers before posting and use this as a great time to start conversations with children about consent – by asking them before posting their picture online.
Phubbing
This rather ugly contraction of the phrase ‘phone snubbing’ is, nonetheless, an important concept. Researchers are identifying the negative impact on children’s social development and engagement with their parents if they are always on their phones. Indeed our A level Psychology students are already linking their study of Attachment Theory, first devised by Bowlby in the 1950s to describe the responsiveness of caregivers to their children’s needs, to parental phone use around their children.
Device free spaces
Many families already ban phones at the table, and Channing parents will already know how strongly I advocate keeping devices out of bedrooms and, in particular, that phones should always be left downstairs overnight. Dr Regehr reinforced the importance of this, reminding us about the quality of sleep which is affected by children (and adults) having phones in their rooms. Ian Russell, who set up a foundation in the name of his daughter Molly, advocates this above all: take the phone out of her room and talk about what she is seeing. As Dr Regehr put it, “Give the gift of analogue this year – a bedroom clock!”.
Her rousing call to arms ended by reminding us that we are worth more than our eyeballs: we can decide that we no longer accept the attention economy and we are allowed to fight for more consumer protections in this space. In response to questions from the floor she made the point that bans on their own – of devices, or of social media – do not work, because at some point our children will reach that 16th birthday. Rather, our aim should be to create “informed, empowered digital citizens” (I was delighted: that’s more or less verbatim what our digital vision says here at Channing) and to educate them about how social media can be harmful, addictive and unethical. She compared our children’s views of social media as being like our views on smoking, concluding: “The aim is that the next generation should look at the previous generation as wildly unhealthy, outdated and naive”.
In a stunning instance of serendipity, this week’s Wednesday Wisdom from TooledUp Education is written by Laura Knight, a digital education and AI expert, and founder of Sapio Ltd, a consultancy empowering education leaders to harness technology for transformational outcomes. In this article, Laura explores how children and young people are engaging with AI, and what we can do to help them use it responsibly and critically. Like Dr Regehr, Laura has lots of practical ideas to share. I hope you find this an interesting read.
Finally this week, today we have marked Ally Wylie Day in remembrance of Ally, a Channing pupil who sadly died of cancer 10 years ago at the age of 17. We wear pink once a year on the day closest to her birthday to remind ourselves both of her, and of her continued role in the Channing community. Junior School parents will know that we work hard to support the food banks run by the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation, which her parents set up in her name, and in the Senior School we are running a Christmas food drive and a book donation programme. More details of both are in the section below: please give generously if you are able to do so.
With best wishes for the weekend,
Lindsey Hughes
Headmistress
