Children and young people live very digital lives: At school, as part of extracurricular activities and to keep in touch with classmates outside of school, for example through gaming and message threads.

A decade of research has shown small but significant correlations between 'screen time' and well-being. And psychologically speaking, we are beginning to see that the most negative consequences can be found in areas not directly related to screen time. Negative online behaviours and experiences (NOBE) include bullying/exclusion, perfection-seeking social media usage patterns, and usage that feels more pressured, automatic and externally driven than active, internally driven and socially valuable.

The NOBE project is a basic research project to develop learning materials and test them as part of an intervention experiment. As adults, we should pay more attention to how digital life and digital behaviour evolves as phones and online games begin to quietly take hold in children’s lives, even though it can be difficult to understand, talk about and, not least, keep up with.

Every child with well-being issues is entitled to support from adults, especially as part of our new digital reality.