If you hear a young person talking about ‘shipping’, it’s probably not about their online clothing purchases.

As we have just stopped reeling from the perplexing and mildly irritating ‘6-7’ trend, it appears we are now welcoming a new preoccupation for our young people – ‘shipping’. Common on platforms like TikTok, the word comes from ‘relationship’ and involves commentary about pairing students romantically. It is not a new concept – something that celebrity fans have long indulged in, speculating about who could be paired up to make a couple.

Unfortunately, however, this is a further example of how seemingly harmless fun can be amplified via the public domain of social media platforms to something that can lead to our children feeling embarrassed, uncomfortable or genuinely upset. This has been the case in more recent weeks for students at Beaconhills and represents a wholly unnecessary disruption to our core focus of coming to school to focus on learning.

Earlier this year Beaconhills College launched Focus Forward, a major initiative aimed at keeping our community at the forefront of information around online challenges. A keynote speaker at our launch event was Kirra Pendergast, founder of Safe on Social and Ctrl+Shft and a world leading expert in cybersecurity and online safety.

She says ‘shipping’ has a way of slipping past the boundary of fun and into something that is far from fun.

“The children being talked about have usually not agreed to any of it. They can feel exposed, embarrassed, pressured, singled out, or simply watched,” she says.

“The difference between this and the gossip we remember from our own childhoods is that nothing online truly disappears. An online post travels, it is shared, screenshotted, resurfaced, and seen by far more people than ever intended, often long after the moment has passed”.

Our Focus Forward initiative aims to empower our busy families with information that provides support in managing the use of technology with our young people. As always we urge our families to continue to have discussions with their children about what they are posting online, their phone behaviour and any concerns they may be having.

At Beaconhills, we recognise the role a strong parent-school partnership plays in developing the capacity for our young people to use this technology respectfully and safely.  

Together we need to keep guiding our students towards safe, respectful relationships in both the digital and real-word settings. 

We know students across Australia aged under 16 are still accessing social media.

A reminder that our digital intelligence page has a range of resources available to our families and students including a link to Wait Mate, where families can take the pledge to delay their child’s use of a smartphone until Year 8.

To learn more about Kirra’s perspective on ‘shipping’, read her blog here on our Digital Intelligence page of BeaconNet.