I have two fears in sharing this second in a series of posts with you: First, in it, I share disturbing information. It’s the truth, however, and in some ways, this series is meant to disturb in order to inspire action: I hope to motivate us all to come together – strength in numbers — to care robustly for our MMS community and larger society.  

My second fear is that you’ll feel judged for your personal and parenting choices. That is the last thing we need. This is an enormously complicated, overwhelming time to parent and to support a family. Feeling judged just paralyzes us and makes us defensive. It’s easy to write as if it’s possible to parent perfectly. It’s not. Because parenting is about human relationships, it is an inherently messy experience, and bruises and bumps along the way are inevitable. 

We’re in this together, MMS: A No Shame Zone. 

Some of the depth of concern I have comes from my own experience parenting two kids (now 18 and 21), and learning from both our parenting successes and the total fails and unhelpful parenting choices my wife and I made along the way, including with digital technologies.

My Purpose

My main goal of this post really is to empower and energize us all with tools, strategies, and knowledge to harness this moment to give our kids the gift of a healthy childhood and adolescence. Behind the current crisis affecting our youth are potent, exciting opportunities to supply the inner tools that will benefit them for life. All is not lost.

The Spark

About this time last year, an MMS parent told me she had offered to help friends out by picking up their 3rd-grade daughter and two of the girls’ friends from a local Marin elementary school. 

On the car ride, she asked the girls if they played soccer, did theater or music, swam, did art, or liked cooking. Every question received a, “No, we don’t really do that.” When she finally asked, “Then, what do you like to do when you’re not in school?” Their reply? “We make TikTok fashion videos.”

I knew the research on the importance of physical, creative, in real life playful activities for kids, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics’ declaration that young people should have no or only very limited screen time. 

Every day I saw too the wholesome joy, friendship, activity, and creativity in our MMS students who stayed after school for after-school care, or Bayside classes; I felt sad and worried that these local 8-year-old girls I had heard about were just spending their time on social media.

This year, as I’ve studied the issue more closely and looked at the data, I am convinced that we need to act boldly, and now. I’m aware too of the limits of what we alone can do as a school, specifically around digital technology and social media. 

While schools like ours may make their campuses no-phone zones for kids, allow computer use only for research, install firewalls, and more, students’ online activities outside of school sometimes end up negatively impacting and coming into the school community. Schools need partnerships with their families. 

While there are possibilities for benefits and pro-social experiences for sure, ultimately the way our kids are currently engaging with digital devices and platforms makes it clear that something significant needs to change.

The Reality

I know we all sense this, and the data is undeniable that, as a whole, young people in our society are suffering: In the U.S. today, suicide is the second leading cause of death amongst the youth of all genders ages 10-14; for girls especially, there’s strong evidence associating excessive social media use with suicide. 

This is likely why Vivek Murthy, our current U.S. Surgeon General, declared that kids under 14 should not have access to social media. 

Sadly, the kids in the U.S. are not alright. 

Why We Need to Take Action Now

• First, the risks are profound. It’s not an exaggeration to say this is a matter of life and death for far too many young people.

• Second, compassion: consider your love for a child or grandchild. You’d walk through fire to help them. Few things are more agonizing than when our children are in emotional and mental anguish. Every parent and grandparent feels this. Even if our kids are flourishing, let’s care about those who are not. 

• Third, as a society, we are interconnected. This crisis is real. The youth are our future. If they are in crisis, it impacts us all–today or tomorrow.

• Fourth, this crisis has a potent opportunity underneath it: If we face it head-on, we can help our kids develop inner capacities that will grow, enrich and solidify their well-being and resilience, now and for the rest of their lives.

The Numbers Tell a Story

It can be easy to get lost in the despair of the data, but I argue that inside the grim numbers is a story that can inspire us to act. 

• In the last decade, there has been an over 300 percent increase in youth admissions to emergency room hospital visits because of self-harm, suicide attempts, and severe mental and emotional distress.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 42 percent of U.S. high schoolers experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness;  22 percent seriously considered attempting suicide. Teen girls and LGBTQ youths’ struggles are most pronounced, with straight boys reporting worsening symptoms too.

For more information, I’ve compiled a summary of other statistics and studies illuminating the current crisis.

These data points show us that passively accepting this new normal comes at significant risk. We have agency. We can do more to increase the likelihood that our children will navigate this media-saturated world prepared and whole.

To create a plan, we need to understand the forces behind the mental health crisis.

I. Root Cause One: Social Media

A root cause of the current crisis is a perfect storm of the ubiquity of social media and digital technology and its tragic mismatch for the health of young brains. 

Before diving in, here are important, initial helpful contexts:

• We are in a new reality: when most of us were teens, the significant risk factors were external: drunk driving, smoking, unwanted pregnancy, drug abuse, etc. Now, for our kids, their most significant risk factors are internal, namely anxiety and depression. 

• Over the last century, our children have begun puberty at around 12; it used to be around 14.
• Teens declining mental health predates the isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning its descent into its alarming state around 2011.
  • Jon Haidt, Professor of Social Psychology at NYU’s Stern School of Business, studies and writes most clearly on evidence that the introduction of social media to youth (around 2011) was the trigger and ongoing fuel stoking the rapid, continuing decline in young people’s mental health.

When our kids enter puberty (now, younger than ever), parts of their brains explode with a new craving to understand peer social hierarchies and survival strategies. Evolutionarily, this is intended to help them prepare for life beyond parental protection. 

Unfortunately, there is a serious neurological mismatch; the rest of their brains, bodies, and selves haven’t caught up. (Especially the underdevelopment of their prefrontal cortexes, which then limits their ability to self-regulate and predict the future consequences of their behaviors.) 

This specific explosion in puberty ushers in an acute preoccupation with peer social dynamics and judgments. We then layer on social media and the 24-7 digital technology ocean they swim in, and for too many adolescents,  it’s completely overwhelming and destabilizing: the devices, apps, and screens they consume have been designed by brilliant adults to capture their users’ attention. 

Why is this a problem? In addition to the damage to their attention spans and the caustic, dangerous underbellies of the world that social media and the internet invite into their lives, likely the most damaging aspect is the endless social comparison and opportunity for social ridicule that social media offers.

When Theodore Roosevelt noted that “comparison is the thief of joy,” he was on to something. Social comparison specifically robs us all of joy and satisfaction with ourselves and our lives. 

Puberty kicks our kids into being hyper-focused on peer social hierarchy and social survival–and precisely how their peers perceive them. The endless onslaught of social information (e.g., “likes,” harassment from trolls, comments, rumors, pictures of peers having fun without them–all of which can be spread to millions with a click of a button) can throw our youth into a hyper-vigilant state of social paranoia about their moment-by-moment status.

This is not weakness on their part; it’s an expression of the need for belonging and the safety that inclusion and approval provide. That said, the persistent fear of humiliation, shame, and exile is debilitating. And, unlike when I was a teen and only had access to a clunky plastic wired phone (or very slow internet connection) to communicate when not at school, the online 24-hour social gossip news cycle saturates our teens’ lives without relief.

It’s absolutely true that adolescence has always included a degree of tumult. Something profound has shifted, however. 

As writer Jessica Grose noted this week, “Most of us who came of age before social media were able to do the hard work of identity formation without having to be aware of the opinions of strangers worldwide. We were lucky to grow up without having to think as much about being perceived and picked over by people who didn’t know us.”

As I wrote earlier, a 2021 longitudinal study shows elevated suicide risks for girls with excessive social media use. And in recent years, a heartbreaking number of young people of all genders–including elementary-aged children–have hurt themselves or taken their own lives after being harassed and shamed online through social media posts. 

The 16th-century Indian poet Kabir once wrote, “Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, ‘Love me.’” This human need to be seen and valued is amplified and fragile in young people, and subjecting themselves to endless peer and anonymous digital commentary and insinuation about their own “loveability” is a disastrous recipe.

II. Root Cause Two: Loss of Meaning & Purpose

Universally, when our kids hit adolescence, they ask, “What is my purpose? and “What is the meaning and purpose of life itself?” In previous generations, organized communities in churches and temples, or in community service clubs or Boy and Girl Scouts, etc., provided answers to these questions. 

Today, for many specific reasons, far fewer families look to such offerings. This has left a void. Into that void has come the all-consuming distraction of technology and the dopamine-rewarded aspiration of getting “likes” and going viral to affirm their self-worth.

There is good news, though: Even when disassociated from religion or other formal meaning-offering communities, if our kids can develop in their inner lives a sense of connection to life beyond themselves (often described as spirituality), it brings about incredible protection: young people with a strong sense of such an inner connection are 90 percent less likely to experience depression. 

Meaning and connection can be experienced in nature, through music and silence, through volunteer service work, in the depths of human connections, through creative endeavors, and even for some through contemplating the wonders of math and science. And, it’s most richly cultivated in Real Life. 

III. Root Cause Three: Social Isolation

A Cigna study concluded what is widely known now:  loneliness in the U.S. is at epidemic levels, and it is particularly acute among our youth. (See this 2021 study. A relevant quote from it: “In multi-level modeling analyses, school loneliness was high when smartphone access and internet use were high.”)

Also well known is that human relationships offer a vast array of mental and physical health protections, and the quality of our relationships even predicts how long we will live. 

The more time our youth spend sucked into screens, relating to flat digital social networks, then the less time they’ll have to benefit from in-person, human, complex, and gratifying relationships.

Certainly, the pandemic was damaging in this regard, and we need to, and can,  break ourselves and our children away from our habituation toward isolation and screen absorption.

Onward

In the first post in this series, I offer 10 key strategies that you and your family can enact right away to turn the current crisis into an opportunity for developing in our kids and teens internal strategies and behavior habits that will inoculate them against the damaging forces they face; these will empower our children for the rest of their lives. 

In the next, final installment on Monday, I’ll share strategies we as a school community can come together to adopt, as we rally to support our kids’ and teens’ well-being.