Shakespeare's Hamlet famously said "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

As a mental health clinician working with 12-25 year-olds, I often sit with the tensions of this regarding social media for young people, and there can be a damned if you do, damned if you don't mentality.

The World Health Organisation reminds us that adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to adulthood that requires development in the understanding of self and others, contextual to the culture in which the young person is living.

A recent study by the Australian Government eSafety Commissioner found that Australian teenagers spend an average of 14 hours online every week, so to understand the lives of our young people we must incorporate the virtual world as much as the physical one. When seeking to make sense of the world, understand social values and build relationships, young people are going online.

Alarmingly, almost half of these teenagers are having negative experiences, with cyberbullying, sexting, compulsive use and inappropriate and unwanted content creating harm and concern for our young people.

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Like most things, there are pros and cons to internet use. Staying in touch with friends and family, accessing education and information, learning about events and activities and meeting new people with similar interests are good things the virtual world can deliver.

On the other hand, spending too much time online, being the victim of online bullying or scams, reduced self-esteem and having personal information and images shared without consent can threaten health and wellbeing.

As someone who works for a youth mental health service, I hear about the positive and the negative impacts the internet is having on our young people.

I hear young people tell me that they were moments away from attempting to take their lives when the internet connected them to our service.

I hear stories of estranged family members connecting through websites and healing years of heartbreak and broken relationships. I also hear 14 year-olds telling me the pressure to text or email nude photographs of themselves to people they don't like, when they don't want to, often seems like the only answer to their friendship dilemmas.

We live in a time where the internet has made us more socially connected than ever before, yet we are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic . Johann Hari explains that our obsessive use of social media is an attempt to fill the hole this loneliness creates, but that social media alone cannot replace social life, and so we are left feeling even more unsatisfied. He explains that loneliness precedes depression and creates as much stress as being punched by a stranger.

When the connections are made between anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide, it is clear to see that social isolation is killing us. The antidote to this is connection. Connection and belonging.

Research shows that social media use cannot cure loneliness, but it can be used as a tool to strengthen genuine connections to others and is most effective when used to enhance existing friendships or forge new meaningful connections.

People must belong to a tribe and often that tribe gathers online.

Sheldon Kopf wrote, "You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences."

The curious thing about the internet is that we are often unaware of the consequences. The answer perhaps is to keep shining a light on these consequences.

So how do we empower young people to drink from the chocolate fountain of social media without making themselves sick?

At the recent launch of our ReFrame youth mental health service Facebook and Instagram pages we tackled this head on and began conversations about safe social media use. It is our responsibility to help young people build online reasoning skills in order to increase their virtual confidence and resilience.

Encouraging them to choose moderated sites and forums, block or unfollow pages that offend them and remember they are only seeing edited highlights of other people's lives online are good places to start.

Turning off notifications, limiting checking times and turning off devices an hour or more before bed are also encouraged. Research shows us that face to face social contact is the best way to build skills communicating online, so ReFrame launched our new social media pages in person at an event to encourage ownership and teamwork from the young people who requested the sites and continue to shape their development.

Education about the risks of social media and the dignity of sitting with this risk will allow us to walk this important social journey with our young people and their families as they build these skills and resilience. Reminding young people of the reach of the internet and its permanence are vital.

Using social media to connect young people to social life seems like the best way to fight social isolation and loneliness and build relationships, connection and belonging.

We all need somewhere to go, something to do, and someone to notice if we don't turn up and sometimes, we find this online. So why risk making our young people suffer the slings and arrows of outrages online fortune if we can take arms together against this sea of troubles? Or start talking about it with them at the very least.

Alice Richards is the Clinical Integration Manager at Community Links Wellbeing and works for the ReFrame youth mental health program.

ReFrame is a free service for 12-25 year-olds in the Wingecarribee and Wollondilly Shires

You can find more information about ReFrame at https://www.communitylinks.org.au/reframe/

You can find the new ReFrame Social Media pages at:

More information and resources for young people and parents can be found at:

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