During a meeting on digital wellbeing, dozens of education professionals exchanged experiences and received tips from experts. The central question was how students can be helped to find a healthy balance between their online and offline lives.
Panel discussion
A panel discussion addressed how intensive smartphone use affects wellbeing, and how parents and children often live in different digital worlds. Young people no longer distinguish between online and offline; the two worlds overlap. This calls for more than a simple phone ban: what happens online affects the classroom and should also be discussed there.
Breakout sessions
This was explored in greater depth during breakout sessions. Using practical examples, Freek Zwanenberg and Lizzy Bakker showed how schools can improve students’ media literacy through the Healthy School approach. In another session, Suzanne Geurts and Floor Ruder from the Trimbos Institute presented the new teaching package ‘Level up your balance!’. It teaches students interactively what digital balance entails, how apps influence them and how they can also appreciate offline activities. The teaching package focuses on cooperation between the school, home and the students themselves, and is still being assessed for quality.
Watch the video here for a brief recap of the meeting.