Look up not down: big tech, attention and adult safeguarding

Estimated reading time 6 minutes.

Last month I was invited by Ben Curran, Director of Development and Partnership Services at Julian Support, to visit their office for a catch-up and a chat. 

I had a great hour or so talking with him and his colleagues Corrine, Natasha, Karen and Linda about adult safeguarding. They described their role in the Accessing Resources from Crisis to Home (ARCH) and Liaison & Diversion services, and how safeguarding presents itself in their day-to-day work. 

As I cycled back from the meeting (part of my 2025 5/2 challenge – see February’s blog), I was buzzing with excitement, but could not understand why. 

What we had talked about wasn’t substantially different from other conversations I’ve had on the topic, but this one had energised me. There was something a little more ‘shared’ among Ben and his team, if that makes sense. Being in the room to hear about their adult safeguarding successes and challenges, and discussing what’s happening in Norfolk and NSAB’s plans for this year, felt like a different dynamic.

I’m not saying that all online conversations and connections are bad, and face-to-face is always better.

The shift to online was critical and a necessary response to a global pandemic. And certainly, the use of online tech has connected me and NSAB with other adults safeguarding colleagues in Norfolk AND across the whole country. It has provided fantastic opportunities to share, reflect, learn and collaborate.

Is not a frequently expressed retort to virtual working that people are not present. Yes, they are in the room, ‘but not’. Have we all not done it, check or respond to emails during online meetings due to competing demands, urgent work priorities. This can feed a sense that virtual meetings sometimes feel less engaging, leading participants to divide their attention. However, this can reduce focus, hinder collaboration and discussion, and impact the overall effectiveness of the meeting.

Being in the room with others, doing the work together, feels positive and often allows the unexpected to emerge, but it was what we all used to do. Do we need to accelerate these opportunities to further strengthen our safeguarding adults work? 

As one colleague noted, we need to revisit the notion of:

‘coming together as the norm, not as an event’.

It illustrates how much working lives have changed in recent times.

The impact of technology, its growing use and significant influence now affect every aspect of our lives. Take, for example, the impact of smartphone technology on children and young people’s learning. Academic research suggests that mobile phones in schools can adversely affect pupils’ educational attainment and contribute to problems such as bullying. But some experts point to the potential learning benefits, and argue that a blanket ban on phones could prove ineffective and counterproductive. Government guidance (Mobile phones in schools: Mandating a ban? - House of Lords Library) discourages the use of phones in schools, but defers to school leaders on prohibiting their use. 

In fact, most schools in England already have policies limiting the use of phones. However, in February a UK study reported that totally banning phone use in school alone does not improve grades or wellbeing. 

Demands on our attention is another impact of digital technology. Is our obsession with our phones inhibiting our experiences (including noticing a safeguarding concern) of the real world? 

I heard Christine Rosen interviewed on the Today programme on Friday 7 February 2025 (2h 47.14). She argues in her new book The Extinction of Experience that we are witnessing a: 

‘mass deskilling in the way we interact as human beings. We have to actively choose everyday human experience that are face-to-face, that aren’t mediated by technology, and that is a very new moment in human history [..] now we use the technology all the time’ 

Rosen’s central point is that much is lost when experience is mediated in this way. We are allowing certain human skills we actually need to go obsolete: face-to-face communication, reading other’s social signals, interacting in public space which respects civility, how to read a room. 

These are all skills we need for adult safeguarding too! When people have their heads down on smartphones, they are not engaged with their surroundings. Indeed, next time you walk down the street or take a trip to the supermarket, look around and note how many people are looking down, not up!

Rosen warns that without firsthand experiences, knowledge becomes abstract, making it harder for individuals to form meaningful connections with the world. She calls for a renewed focus on real-world engagement to preserve cultural and environmental awareness.

While I am not sure I would agree with all of Rosen’s arguments, she does make a compelling point that ‘we are losing the knack for analogue, face-to-face communication’. Safeguarding uses ‘reachable moments’, where we need to respond to both the obvious but also to the less obvious, subtler changes and comments. But if we are looking ‘down and not up’, are we in danger of missing something potentially important?

Our attention is big business. The ‘attention economy’ is the idea that our attention is a valuable resource, just like money. With so much information available – on social media, TV, websites, and apps – companies compete to grab and keep our focus, because harvesting our data makes them huge profits. The more time we spend looking at their content, the more ads they can show us, and the more likely we are to buy something.

Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In, draws comparisons between Big Tech's monetisation of attention and the Industrial Revolution's transformation of labour. Interviewed on The Media Show (12 Feb 2025), Hayes’s compelling analysis is that attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. In his new book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, he describes how the attention economy is reshaping the way people engage with media and technology, the social and political consequences of mass digital engagement, and potential regulatory solutions.

All of which prompts a number of questions relating to safeguarding:

• Should our safeguarding boards and networks consider the implications of the move to digital for engaging with partnerships and communities to protect adults (and children) experiencing or at risk of abuse and harm?
• How does the work of safeguarding need to respond to gain people’s attention?
• How could safeguarding reshape itself to make use advances in technology and AI?
• Where is the innovative AI work already happening in the safeguarding space? 

A shoutout here and credit to Will Wright and Sadie Barber from the Suffolk Safeguarding Partnership, who I spent some time with recently. They were describing how they use Microsoft CoPilot in their work to measure the impact of learning from safeguarding reviews and develop briefing materials from new guidance and policy documents. I know this is being talked about in national networks and by other SABs, and safeguarding adult practitioners have interesting examples to share.

• How do we approach the challenge to get those around us (and I suspect those working in safeguarding too) to look up, not down?

Thank you.

Walter Lloyd-Smith
Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board Manager