Ms Fiona Jennings:

Social media certainly play a role and we are always going between the good angel and the bad devil. As Mr. Power said, where children and young people have particular vulnerabilities or where there is something there already, those can be exacerbated by social media.

I want to touch on what the Deputy said about the anxiety. I spoke to our clinical lead in preparation for this meeting in respect of what is coming in on the digital mental health and well-being programme that is on the silver cloud platform. She said that separation anxiety is coming up, probably for younger children. We support parents of children from five to 18 on the programme, and the children themselves can do a programme from 14 to 18. Parents are saying the children have concerns about the parent being safe and are constantly phoning them to see where they are. Some of that is the impact of Covid-19. School avoidance, in particular around separation anxiety, is where the mindset before was that they had no choice, but Covid-19 has given them a choice somewhat as to whether they go to school.

There is social anxiety and struggling to engage offline, which touches on what the Deputy mentioned.

The message around health anxiety for the last two years has been to keep safe and do not make others sick, especially those who are more vulnerable. Other stuff that is coming through is around obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD,-type behaviours, such as excessive hand washing, use of sanitiser, fear of vomiting in public etc. All those levels of anxiety are exacerbated.