Supporting and understanding the digital generation

• Date: June 4, 2025
• Time: 09:00 – 16:15
• Cost: BSA Full Member – £150, Non-member – £225
• Venue: Eton College

Conference outline:

The digital generation are defined as “individuals who have grown up in an era of widespread access to digital technologies like the internet, smartphones, and social media.”

This is an in-person conference hosted at Eton College, bringing together educators, pastoral leaders, and safeguarding professionals to explore the complex realities of young people’s digital lives within school environments. The conference will feature expert-led sessions on pressing topics such as online safety, the rise of radical online ideologies like the manosphere, and the ongoing debate around the role of smartphones in childhood—spotlighting the Smartphone-Free Childhood movement. Attendees will also have the chance to take part in interactive breakout sessions designed to foster meaningful dialogue and practical strategies for managing digital challenges in school communities.

Training topics include:

• Identifying and responding to digital safeguarding risks
• Managing screen time and device use in school settings
• Communicating effectively with students and parents about online behaviour

Learning outcomes:

• Greater confidence in identifying online risks and responding appropriately
• Enhanced understanding of the manosphere and how it influences young people
• Practical strategies for managing devices in schools
• Tools for creating a balanced, safe digital environment for students

Whether you’re a school leader, houseparent, or safeguarding lead, this conference offers timely, practical insights to help shape your school’s digital approach.

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Speakers: 

Dr Anna Lavis MA, MSc, MRes, PhD, Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology, University of Birmingham

Anna Lavis is an Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology in the Department of Applied Health Sciences, and the Institute for Mental Health. In a range of collaborations across academic, policy and clinical interfaces, her work has two core focuses:

Anna leads a programme of research into social media and health, with a particular focus on mental health. She directs the Social Media and Health Research Network, which is exploring what it would, could or should mean to ‘live healthily’ with social media now and in the future. Against this background, her current research asks why people may engage with online eating disorders, self-harm and suicide content, and interrogates the meanings of ‘care’ and ‘crisis’ at the intersections of online and offline spaces. Most recently, a study funded by Samaritans has used online ethnography to comprehensively explore the nuances of self-harm and suicide content on social media, investigating pathways to both harm and peer support. Anna has advised a wide range of policymakers, clinical and educational organisations on the topic of online harms, as well as various tech platforms.

Anna’s second research focus lies in employing anthropological theory and method to develop approaches and solutions to the key 21st century challenge of mental ill-health. Paying attention to the socio-cultural, political and environmental contexts that shape lived experiences, she has conducted extensive research into eating disorders, self-harm, suicidality and psychosis. Threaded through these empirical focuses are conceptual emphases on materiality, specifically the material culture of mental health, and concepts, ethics and practices of care. Anna has particular expertise in ethnographic methods, having conducted sustained ethnographic fieldwork in online, clinical and community settings.

Jwana Aziz, Research Fellow, Applied Health Sciences, University of Birmingham

Will Orr-Ewing, Smartphone Free Childhood

Will is the founder of Keystone Tutors and Arka Learning, and has been a trustee of schools across the entire sector. Since it launched in February 2024, he has been volunteering for Smartphone Free Childhood – a cause close to his heart.

Jon Needham, Director of Safeguarding, Oasis Community Learning

Jon is responsible for the strategic leadership of safeguarding and wellbeing of children and vulnerable adults accessing services provided by The Oasis Trust to ensure there is a culture that puts exemplary safeguarding at the heart of all the Trust does. Jon originally trained as a nurse specialising in adolescents with life limiting illnesses before moving to become an advisor to a large strategic health authority and a commissioner in a primary care trust. He worked briefly as a specialist advisor on two World Health Organization projects before becoming the education safeguarding advisor in a large local authority.

David Walker, Executive Director, Boarding & Education and Director, BSA/TIOB

David is the BSA Director and joined the BSA group in August 2023. He has over 20 years’ experience in boarding schools and has worked in a range of schools in the UK and Africa, alongside being a prep school governor and a trustee of a MAT. Before taking up his post at the BSA, David was Deputy Head Pastoral at a large co-ed independent school in the South-East.