Let’s team up to help young people speak up
Opinion
From Adolescence to Channel 4’s Gen Z research, we’ve seen the impact of the digital world on young people. Join Childline’s Ultimate Sports Day to raise funds and encourage collective action for the charity’s vital service.
Spoiler alert! This article aims to persuade you to sign your team up to Ultimate Sports Day in aid of Childline – I will not be offended in the slightest if you just skip to the bottom and hit the sign-up link.
A few weeks ago, I ventured back to the town where I lived for the first 20-odd years of my life.
While walking the dog around the cloudy streets of Ayrshire, I passed by my old school. A couple of classes were out taking part in sports day-esque relay races and I started to reminisce about the good — and not so good — memories of my time in that playground.
Just a few days before, on the four-hour train ride to Scotland, I had binge-watched the brilliant Netflix smash Adolescence. The authenticity and relatability of the series, combined with brilliant cinematic craft, seemed to hit home hard with people across the country.
While I’m not a parent, I could definitely empathise with the themes and issues so brilliantly, yet terrifyingly, portrayed.
My own formative school years — particularly on the more social side — were, for the most part, a mixed bag. I had a wonderful group of friends who looked out for me all the time, but I was also the brunt of a lot of teasing and, on a few occasions, physical bullying.
I know friends and colleagues who suffered far worse than I ever did, but the impact of what I encountered stayed with me for a long time — particularly the “shaming” of my sexuality at a time when I wasn’t even really thinking about that myself.
Today, we live in a world where — quite rightly — we’re all encouraged to talk more. Yet, back then, that didn’t really seem like an option. Like most teens, I didn’t want to talk to my parents about these things, didn’t want to risk losing any of my friends and certainly didn’t want to talk to a teacher in case they made a bigger deal of it.
I vividly remember Childline being around back then, but it never crossed my mind to call. You don’t call Childline just to talk to someone…
New generation in a more complicated world
But how wrong I was. I’ve been immensely privileged to visit one of Childline’s counselling centres, where they offer a free, private and confidential service for young people to talk about anything that’s concerning them.
On average, a child contacts Childline every 45 seconds and almost three-quarters of their counselling sessions now take place online.
This particularly resonated with me, given the impact of the digital world we saw in Adolescence and as shown in the latest Channel 4 research Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust, which highlights the negative impact of viewing and consuming media alone on personal devices.
Today, Childline — forever synonymous in my head with Dame Esther Rantzen and the little phone logo — is needed more than ever by a new generation of young people living in an even more complicated world.
Collective action
Over the years, the media and advertising industry has definitely taken Childline into its heart and, four years ago, Ultimate Sports Day was launched to raise much-needed funds for the charity.
The great thing about this brilliant afternoon is that it embodies all the things so many of us want to see in society at large — more collective action, people being brought together and a sense of solidarity built around play and, ultimately, fun.
We’ve fielded an Ozone team for the past three years and, while it’s obviously a great way to financially support this incredibly important cause, it plays an equally important role in team engagement. There’s always a healthy internal scrum to bag a place.
On Thursday 19 June, Ultimate Sports Day will return to the beautiful surroundings of London’s Regent’s University. Since its launch, the event has raised more than £1m for Childline — enough to answer almost 250,000 calls from children and young people, and essentially fund 25 days of the service.
We’d love for you and your company to be part of something brilliant — I can, hand on heart, say that your team will love it.
You can book your team place for Ultimate Sports Day here or drop me a line to find out more.
As part of The Media Leader’s pledge to celebrate and champion the industry, we are on a mission to bring some of the fun back into media. Like the Ultimate Sports Day, we have our own Media Mind competition. If you know of media events that aim to do the same, please let us know.
Bryan Scott is chief marketing officer at Ozone